Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call committee on Bill 9, and in Committee A, I call continued estimates of the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 9 — WORKERS COMPENSATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 2018

(continued)

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 9; L. Reid in the chair.

The committee met at 1:35 p.m.

Sections 1 to 5 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. H. Bains: I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 1:36 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Reporting of Bills

BILL 9 — WORKERS COMPENSATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 2018

Bill 9, Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2018, reported complete without amendment.

Mr. Speaker: When shall the bill be read for a third time?

Hon. H. Bains: Now, Mr. Speaker.

Third Reading of Bills

BILL 9 — WORKERS COMPENSATION
AMENDMENT ACT, 2018

A. Weaver: I rise to take my place in third reading to address the bill before the House at this particular juncture. I do rise with a great deal of dismay, knowing that this bill went through committee stage in but five minutes at a time….

Interjection.

A. Weaver: I’ll wait for the Clerk to pass the message on.

As it’s known, I had motions on the order paper. I had given notice to the minister. I had given notice to the opposition. The opposition informed me that they had numerous questions to raise on this bill. I was in a meeting downstairs. I’m three minutes late for the start. Now, I understand parliamentary rules. I understand parliamentary rules are such that I missed approval of the title. But at third reading, I’d like to provide more reasons why I have profound troubles with this bill as put forward to us now.

Those troubles are the fact that this bill does not include 911 dispatchers. Hon. Speaker, I tell you, after the member from Vancouver, the minister now, for Vancouver-Hastings, rose and spoke yesterday, I received an email from one of the people he mentioned, who he had consulted in developing his private member’s bill. That person had a panic attack when he thanked her for input. The government ignored, in this legislation, 911 dispatchers, despite the fact that they actually included the 911 dispatchers in the private member’s bill that the member for Vancouver-Hastings, now minister, brought to this in 2016 and in 2017 as well.

Now, I get that the B.C. Liberals are playing games. I get the fact that they don’t actually want to have this debated. I get the fact that they say one thing and do an absolute other. I get the fact that the member for Chilliwack, the critic for this file, who had told me that he had a number of questions to ask, would but ask five minutes of questions while I’m meeting with developers — who are profoundly troubled about the direction this government is taking on the speculation tax.

[1:40 p.m.]

If the opposition opposite did their job, we’d still be debating this bill, and the B.C. Greens, who have spent many, many hours consulting with stakeholders from north to south and east to west of this province about what’s not in this bill…. We would actually have a debate of substance on this bill on the issues contained. But members opposite abdicated their responsibility as elected members to the B.C. Legislature to raise issues and bring these issues forward for debate. That is unacceptable.

It is unacceptable for members of that party opposite to not stand in this House and take to task the minister for a bill that he has introduced, which they had had time to explore when it was a private member’s bill introduced earlier — and after being told that they were going to do this. That’s shameful.

I get that they can play games. But the message I want people to take home here today is: in this place, it’s not about doing what’s right for the people of British Columbia; it’s about doing what’s right for petty, political games for the B.C. Liberals. And frankly, I think the B.C. NDP owes some responsibility here, too, because they knew I that had these amendments on the order paper.

I struggle right now with whether or not I’m going to support this bill, whether or not I’m going to support this bill and call division to have a standing vote on this bill because of the fact of what’s not included, because what just transpired in this House is reprehensible — reprehensible to nurses in the province of British Columbia, nurses struggling with PTSD, nurses struggling with systemic mental health issues from their job.

What’s wrong with this legislation is we’re not talking about teachers in this province of British Columbia — teachers who work in environments of bullying and harassment with unsupportive administrators, who struggle and take leave but are not covered by WCB, because they have to prove that their mental illness or disorder directly came from their workplace. They have to go to the WCB and actually argue their case. What can be more profoundly troubling to an individual than to have to stand and recount the stories and relive their experiences because the presumptive clause doesn’t apply to them?

Shame on the members of the B.C. Liberal Party. How you can go back to your constituents — 911 responders, nurses, teachers, factory workers, construction workers — and say that you played political games in this House today so that we’re not debating amendments to actually put their interests first? Hon. Speaker, this is a very sad day in politics in British Columbia, when once again the B.C. Liberals put their political interests, their desire not to have debate because of their quest for power, ahead of the interests and their responsibility to the rights of British Columbians.

There were a number of things that I had put on the order paper. I put two orders. One is to have a presumptive clause for all workers. Now, I fortunately am here to say to those listening that I’ve had very, very good conversations and follow-up with the minister about the importance of this issue, and I truly believe that the minister understands this issue. I truly believe that we will see action in a timely fashion, particularly with the 911 responders. That, to me, is critical.

Again, what we need to recognize is what’s happening in other jurisdictions. Let’s look at the case of Florida, for example. There is not a person in this place who does not recall what happened tragically in the Parkland high school in Florida — not a member in this place. What do they have in Florida? They’ve introduced presumptive clauses for PTSD for 911 responders, because they are the front-line responders. They are the first people to take the call. They’re the person talking to a child huddled under a desk while someone is going by and shooting their friends to death in the hallway.

These are the people that have to deal with PTSD, and this government — and opposition through their silly, petty games — have actually put them, thrown them under the bus.

You can tell I’m passionate about this, Hon. Speaker, because this is wrong. This is not right. This is not how this place should function. Frankly, I think the member from Chilliwack should resign as the critic, resign his chair, as he did not put the people of British Columbia front and centre here.

Interjections.

[1:45 p.m.]

A. Weaver: They think this is funny, Hon. Speaker, and that’s what’s wrong with that party. This isn’t a game. This is about good policy for people. This is about when you say something to someone…. This place only functions if you can trust your colleagues, when they say they’re going to do something, that they will actually do something. But no, no. That’s not the case for the B.C. Liberals.

Let’s go to the province of Nova Scotia, which in September of 2017, this last year, passed a bill to expand presumptive PTSD to 911 operators and continuing-care workers — two different groups. Why? I come back to the story, the compelling story that I read yesterday, about a first responder.

I get that some first responders, the 911 dispatchers, are already paramedics or already police officers and so will be covered under the presumptive clauses. So not only have we got a problem here; we have an equity problem. If you happen to be an RCMP dispatcher, you’re likely covered. But if you’re in a local government, you’re not.

If you’re the dispatcher who actually is dealing with the Parkland shooter, in Florida you’d be covered — but not in the province of British Columbia, for two reasons. This government forgot, frankly, in my view, to put it in the legislation. But more important is the fact that the members opposite, the B.C. Liberals, who should be hanging their heads in shame today, saw fit to end debate on this because of the fact that I’m about three minutes late, despite the fact I’m told that there were many questions to come.

That’s clever. That’s clever politics. Got to give it to the B.C. Liberals. That’s what they’re good at. It’s all about politics for them. It was all about politics in the election, the Kinder Morgan pipeline, the five conditions — all about politics. They have no credibility.

Hon. Speaker, I must say that I use the word “honourable,” and I mean that dearly and sincerely when I say hon. Speaker here, because I see a man of honour in the Speaker’s chair, and I don’t know how he ever could have sat on that side of the House with those members opposite.

Coming back to the bill, we have a problem. We have a problem with the fact that right now this bill is oiling the squeaky wheel. It’s oiling the squeaky wheel of those who lobby the best. There’s no question we need to have presumptive clauses for police, firefighters, corrections officers, sheriffs. But there’s also no question in my mind that we need to include emergency dispatchers. We need to include teachers, include nurses and include workers on the construction site.

You know what? If a worker on a construction site falls and breaks his or her arm, they’re covered under WCB. They don’t have to go through the presumptive clause when they show up in a cast and say: “This happened at work.” But let’s suppose somebody falls from a high crane and lands, sadly, and gets splattered across the ground directly in front of a worker on a construction site, and that worker struggles with some mental disorder after that. Right now, there’s no presumption clause. That worker has to prove to WCB that the PTSD was a direct consequence of that incident that they saw. That’s wrong.

Saskatchewan understands that that’s wrong. Alberta understands that that’s wrong. In both of those provinces, as defined under the acts, their respective workers compensation acts, all workers are covered under the presumptive clause.

I understand that there was a possibility that one or two of my amendments would have been ruled out of order, because there might have been fiscal consequences associated with it. I understand that. The minister has missed an opportunity, though, to be able to put onto the record what his views are on this issue. It’s a very good opportunity that he’s missed.

The members opposite have missed an opportunity to actually let British Columbians know what they think. Their actions have told British Columbians what they think about this bill. Their actions have said they’re not willing to do their job as opposition.

For heaven’s sake. Why don’t half of you guys quit? Let’s have an election. Let’s get some more B.C. Greens down here, and we’ll do their job for them if they’re not willing to do it themselves — to actually hold government to account, not to ask stupid questions about stuff to try to score political gain but actually hold government to account for their actions as seen in the bill — not act as apologists but actually hold government to account.

[1:50 p.m.]

It’s shameful, what we just witnessed there from the B.C. Liberals today.

I come back to the teachers in British Columbia, none of whom now are afforded the opportunity to hear the minister’s response, the debate, members opposite discuss what they thought about their views.

Given that you’ve missed the opportunity to hear what the B.C. Liberals and the B.C. NDP believe to be their views, I’ll tell you what the B.C. Green views are. The B.C. Green views are this. No teacher should have to stand in front of the Workers Compensation Board and argue that the fact that they have depression and anxiety issues from working in an intolerant workplace, where their school administrator doesn’t support them and their school board, school administration and district administration don’t support them.

No person should have to relive that experience in front of the Workers Compensation Board. Instead, just like in Alberta and Saskatchewan, the presumptive clause should be applied to them.

I don’t know how many teachers I know who have had to deal with this. In fact, if you look at statistics in British Columbia, something is pushing…. Almost 50 percent of new teachers actually quit the teaching profession in the first five years. Why do they do that? Because of the situation they’ve been put in. In many cases, it’s overwhelming, but they have no place to go now.

They can go on LTD and get a fraction of their wage, but if they actually had a presumptive clause within their contracts, it would force school districts’ administration to actually ensure that the working environment that these teachers participate in is one that’s conducive, friendly, safe, free of bullying, free of harassment. But that’s not going to happen here in the province of British Columbia, because members opposite saw so fit as to play silly political games to try to avoid discussion on the amendments before us.

Again, let’s move beyond the teachers. Let’s talk about nurses. I’m sure many of the members here…. I can’t be the only member…. Well, I’m probably the only member in opposition who actually reads their emails. I’m pretty sure none of them do. They probably have their staff read them, and they don’t respond themselves. Frankly, I know that to be the case, because I get so many people from their ridings email our office pointing out that they get no response from the B.C. Liberals, and will we please help them out. I will put the member for Prince George–Valemount…. I’ll say that that is not the case with her, but I’ve got it from so many others sitting there right now.

Let’s go to nurses. I can take a particular…. I don’t know how half the nurses do their job, but let me tell you a story about my daughter. Let me tell you a story that, to me, tells me the type of environment nurses have to work in.

My daughter had a very, very serious heart issue, and she was misdiagnosed by the pediatrician — a young pediatrician, straight out of med school, who had diagnosed it as something different. The nurse was there. The nurse says: “I know what this is. I’ve worked here for 30 years. This doctor is not listening to me. He won’t do anything, but this is what it is.”

Fortunately, I have some experience in research. So I went down to the medical library, and I started researching this disease. I went down, and I phoned one of my colleagues who happened to be in the Scripps Institute in California. They are one of the leading research areas on this disease. I was able to find out about this disease. I was able to find out about the cure for this disease.

With the help of that nurse, I was able to follow as I was told — to advocate on behalf of my child and demand a second opinion in the hospital, because the treatment that was being offered was not going to help her and, actually, was going to make her worse.

That ended up in a happy place. My daughter got better. But I can imagine that nurse having to go through that day in, day out with other patients — watching children suffer because a doctor, who happens to think that they know everything and the nurse knows nothing, won’t listen to them.

This isn’t dissing doctors in general, but it’s symptomatic of human behaviour. In all our society, there are people who are not willing to listen. There are people who know better than everyone. There are people who do not respect their staff’s opinions, and people sometimes have to work in that.

The whole purpose of having these nurses included was to ensure that when systemic issues like that are in play, which can lead clearly to long-term mental disorders, clearly they should not have to relive these experiences before the WCB to prove that this is a direct consequence of this.

[1:55 p.m.]

I suspect that the member opposite….

Are you hoping to introduce? I don’t believe that that is allowed under the rules, because one side….

Interjections.

A. Weaver: Well, what I can ask, hon. Speaker, is to seek leave to pause briefly to allow the member to introduce the guests, and then continue.

Mr. Speaker: Yes, if we may. Thank you.

Introductions by Members

M. Hunt: It’s just an opportunity to give the hon. member a moment to catch his breath as I introduce one of three classes that are coming today from a school in my district. They are from Surrey Christian School, grade 5 students with their parents and teacher. I ask that the House would please make them welcome here as they enjoy the debate.

Debate Continued

A. Weaver: We’ve got a full two hours to work with on this bill. I’m looking forward to using as much of that as possible as I try to…. Yes, at third reading, I believe I get, as the designated speaker, a full two hours to address this. I would seek clarification from the Clerk, with reference to standing orders, please, to actually ensure and let me know how much time I actually have.

We’ve talked about nurses. Let me talk about some others. Can you imagine the tragedy that happened at Burns Lake — the explosion of a mill. I’m pretty sure that there are a number of workers at this mill who, after the mill exploded — and they live in the community — actually are suffering from issues with respect to PTSD, mental health issues, depression and anxiety, as a direct consequence of that mill explosion. But what they have to do….

Two — what does the two mean? Exactly. I have two hours. Take your seat, Liberals opposite. You had the opportunity to have a short debate. I’d love to inform you of this issue in much more detail, seeing as you’re willing to abdicate your responsibility to serve as opposition and quiz government on a critical bill that’s before us here in the House today, one that actually adds a presumptive clause for mental health issues to all workers in the province — sorry, to firefighters, paramedics, police officers, correction officers and sheriffs, but not all workers in the province. I’m laying the case as to why that has to happen.

I will tell people listening on TV now or checking Hansard later — again, I come back to this, and I’ll come back to this periodically over the next two hours as we enjoy this debate — that I have had good discussions with the minister about the fact that this is only a beginning. I wish he’d had the opportunity to say that, too, himself. This is only the beginning of moving this bill forward.

Rest assured, people reading this, I’m not going to give this one up. I’m going to be like a dog with a bone, more like a pit bull with a bone, on this issue, because it is wrong. It is wrong not to have emergency dispatchers included. It is wrong not to have other workers included. It is wrong not to follow the leadership of Alberta and Saskatchewan and actually have a presumptive clause for all workers.

Let’s go back to the issue in Nova Scotia, or Florida. Again, these issues are front and centre in their recent legislation. Most provinces in the country have the same thing for 911 dispatchers. It makes no sense to me, when you talk about emergency responders…. This is what I find remarkable. I’m going to focus on the 911 dispatchers exclusively right now.

What I find remarkable about their omission is that when you say first responder, government and opposition, for years, have included 911 dispatchers in their understanding of what first responders are, so much so that the member for Vancouver-Hastings had them included in his private member’s bill, brought in, in 2016 as well as in February of 2017. Two times. But they’re missing. There’s no reason for it.

Can you imagine, now, if you’re a local government first responder and you’re sitting next to somebody from the RCMP who’s a dispatcher, who happens to be covered because they’re a police officer, or an ambulance dispatcher who happens to be a paramedic? They’re covered under this. But that community, local person sitting right beside them, in the same room, the call-receiver, for heaven’s sake, getting that distress call….

[2:00 p.m.]

Remember the story. I do apologize to the children in the crowd here for the story that I’m about to tell, the story I told yesterday about a man who phoned in a 911 as he had tried to commit suicide, as his entrails were hanging out. This woman had to keep him alive, yet she wasn’t covered, but her colleague sitting next to her in the RCMP would be covered. It’s just wrong. It’s just wrong at a very fundamental level.

We talked about office workers. What about office workers? The whole purpose of including office workers, bank tellers, employees in universities, in colleges, in schools, custodians or whatever is that there are many, many environments in the province of British Columbia that are not safe places to work because of systemic workplace bullying, workplace harassment, systemic issues with dysfunctional governance, dysfunctional administration, power over conflicts.

I could go on and on, and the litany of examples I could give would make most people’s faces drop over here. Unfortunately, half the members opposite spent their entire time in politics, and they probably don’t actually have any experience other than politics.

I could actually provide members from their own staff who came to me because they’ve experienced this in their MLA offices. This is a problem. But those staff, if they were covered under workers compensation, would actually be able to go and make a claim without having to prove it. They’d still have to go to a psychiatrist or a qualified psychologist. They’d still have to get the medical evidence, but they’d have benefits right from the get-go.

Now let’s suppose you’re working…. I come back to an example that I alluded to at second reading. You’re a single mother. You could be a single father, but let’s just suppose, for clarity, you’re a single mother.

You’re a single mother living in, say, the Kamloops–South Thompson riding. You’re a single mother living there, and you’re working in an office. You’re a receptionist in an office. You’ve got two kids at home. You had a deadbeat dad involved. Deadbeat dad got in a car and took off, ran away somewhere. You’re stuck paying the bills. You’ve got two children. You don’t want to go on welfare because you’re a worker. You’re somebody who actually believes in the importance of actually working hard, earning a living.

[L. Reid in the chair.]

Then you go and you realize that your skills are limited. You’ve got a job that gives you the right number of hours with the appropriate wage. There are very few of these jobs. You might be working and have developed expertise in terms of as a receptionist in, let’s say, an auto mechanic shop, for lack of a better example. There are probably a lot of those in Kamloops. Let’s think of something that’s not…. Maybe a college department where you need specific skills. Thompson Rivers University — I love the university. Let’s just find a department there where they need your skills.

Now you get into an environment where you need this job, you’ve got kids at home, and the environment is abusive. You’ve got a boss who’s abusive. You’ve got a boss who’s demeaning. You’ve got a boss with unrealistic expectations. You’ve got a boss who basically has an insecurity complex because they know they shouldn’t actually be in their position of authority, but they’re your boss. And they try to exert their power because bad bosses lack self-confidence and feel the appropriate way to overcome that is to belittle their employees or harass their employees or put unnecessary expectations or demands on their employees.

But you need this job. You need this job because there is no other job that you can have. You are a single mom. You’ve got two children at home. You’re working that job to provide food for your children, and you don’t want to go on welfare and the stigma of that. If we had basic income, it would be different, but you don’t want to go on welfare.

What do you do? Well, right now what you do is you can go on disability leave if you happen to be a unionized employee that has a long-term disability plan negotiated with your employer. That’s fine. You’ll get some reduced salary. Typically, there’s a short period of time. Typically there’s an approach to getting you back to work.

[2:05 p.m.]

If you wanted to go to workers compensation — suppose you’re not even a union employee and you don’t have LTD — you have to take the risk, when you expose yourself to make a claim, that they will agree, even if you have professionals. You have to prove that that is happening in the workforce. You have to relive everything, with all the risk of you recounting that story, as to whether or not your boss will actually be worse than he or she was before. You take on that risk with no certainty as to what the outcome will be.

We had an opportunity here to actually have a presumptive clause which would give certainty to allow that person to have coverage while they went to make a claim. If WCB…. No one has taken away their rights to challenge a claim. That’s what the amendment, which I didn’t get a chance to put…. We’ve all had a chance to read it on the order papers because it’s been there for two days. Members opposite knew full well that I was going to raise it.

Members opposite actually told me — the member for Chilliwack — that he had a couple more questions to go and he’ll be going for a while. That’s good leadership from the B.C. Liberals.

We had an opportunity to help that person. I don’t know how many examples I’ve heard from professions across British Columbia, not only firefighters and police officers. There’s no question about them requiring presumptive clauses. There’s just no question.

What about tow truck drivers? You know, prior to getting elected — I had a couple hang over last term, but I’m done now — I had done a lot of expert witnessing in forensic meteorology, which is an area where we use meteorological conditions to reconstruct weather conditions, road conditions, at the time of the accident.

Now, in that time — some of these go to court; some don’t — I get to see a lot of pictures. Let me tell you, most people in this room would not want to see those pictures. What you see in these pictures are bits of people splayed across the street, entrails hanging here, decapitation hanging there, a missing limb over there. These are not pleasant pictures to see. But I just see pictures. They’re not real to me.

Now, imagine you’re a tow truck driver and you’ve been called because they’ve blocked the main highway on the Coquihalla. You’ve been called to move some cars, but because they’re doing an investigation, you’ve still got some body parts on the scene, and you show up there. What is the difference between that tow truck driver going there and a first responder who goes there? They see the same thing.

In the one case, we’re going to give presumptive clause. In the other, we say, “No, no, we’re not going to consider you,” because you didn’t have a lobby group come to the Legislature and actually push this forward. You didn’t have a lobby group to do that.

This is a lack of courage in leadership. We could have followed the lead of both Saskatchewan and Alberta and done what they have done and introduced presumptive clauses for all workers covered under the Workers Compensation Act, but no, we didn’t do that.

Games were played in the Legislature here today. Games were played in a desperate attempt…. Even after I was asked by one member opposite — a member opposite who I actually have a lot of respect for…. That member was going to contemplate the merits of one of the amendments and get back to me but never got back to me because the member for Chilliwack, their critic, decided to shut down debate, despite the fact of saying he had a number of questions.

I was five minutes late — not even five minutes. I was three minutes late because I had developers in my office who are at wit’s end because the B.C. Liberals, for years, ignored the crisis in affordability and the B.C. NDP have brought in issues with respect to taxation that have led to a crisis that they have to deal with. They see us as the only opportunity.

Let’s get back to this bill, which we should have canvassed much more extensively at committee stage, but the member for Chilliwack abdicated his responsibility to do his due diligence. Frankly, British Columbians should be quite upset about that.

Coming back to the bill, I’ve talked about Florida, PTSD responders there. I’ve talked about Nova Scotia. I’ve talked about other provinces like Ontario, Manitoba, the maritime provinces, which all have presumptive clauses. But we somehow think that in B.C., we’re not going to actually consider 911 responders as emergency responders, as first responders, as those that this legislation should be brought to.

[2:10 p.m.]

I’ve given examples of nurses. I’ve given examples of teachers. I’ve given examples of office workers. I’ve given examples of construction workers. Let’s find other examples. What about a manufacturer?

I used to work — one of my first jobs that I had as a youngster — in Edinburgh on the Leith docks. Now, any of you who know Edinburgh and the Leith docks there will know that that is the roughest part of Edinburgh. My first day to work, I showed up and a guy had his arm covered in stitches because his wife had stabbed him with an umbrella. The other guy I had to work with had scars around his face because he recently had a beer glass put in his face.

I know that there was a student in that environment who was working there. I was a big guy. I played rugby. I got on with these guys. But there was a student there who they didn’t like. They didn’t like this guy because he was nippy. Then two things could have happened. I’ll tell you what did happen, and I’ll tell you what could have happened.

What did happen for this guy is that he had his door slammed…. I worked in this ice factory. We ground ice and put it on fishing boat trawlers and trucks that came to get it. It was minimum wage, etc. So what happened here is they slammed his arm in a door, and they broke it. They broke his arm. That young man lived in terror when he came to work, but he needed the money. He wasn’t from an uppity side of Edinburgh. He was from the north side of Edinburgh. He needed that money, so he came to work every day and lived in terror as he tried to make a small living.

In B.C., we had the opportunity to protect someone like that, a factory worker like that. Heaven forbid someone in that ice factory — we had ice grinders there — slipped into an ice grinder. Can you imagine if you’d seen someone fall in that ice grinder and come out into the ice bags that we were holding — in bits and pieces, blocks of cubed ice? Can you imagine the PTSD that would have arisen from that?

In B.C., now we had an opportunity — as Alberta and Saskatchewan have done — to include a presumptive clause that would have said that rather than you having to relive this and go and argue before the WCB that your PTSD or your systemic issues of anxiety and depression have arisen from that incident…. Despite the fact you have psychiatric and psychological assessments saying it did, you have to argue your case to the WCB, and you get no benefits until that case is approved.

Despite that we had an opportunity to do something different here, to recognize that it’s pretty clear that that kid, who’s living in an abusive environment…. There’s no way that guy would want to risk his life and go and challenge a ruling about where he is. It literally would have been risking his life. Or in the other case, to have to relive going through that ice shredder — I can’t imagine it.

There’s another example from another one of my jobs in Edinburgh. I worked flipping burgers, again on the north side of Edinburgh. That’s a tough side of Edinburgh. There was a young guy there who was a cook. Management didn’t like the cook, so they were very abusive to the cook. The cook took a lot of grief there.

He was a short-order cook trying to make ends meet. If that short-order cook leaned on the stove and burnt his hand, we don’t need to worry about presumption there. He burnt his hand in work. But there’s a stigma in our society that this government promised that they would take steps to mitigate. It’s a stigma about mental disorders, anxiety, depression.

For the first time in history, we have a ministry here dedicated to this — dedicated to mental health and addictions. Yet why we are not actually standing up and standing for what we believe in when we’ve put in place the mechanism, the support, and campaigned in elections on destigmatizing mental health illness and treating it as a disease like any physical disease….

We come back to that cook, who would get presumption for a burn. But presumption for an abusive, bullying workplace? No way. He’d have to prove it. Good luck trying to prove it in the north side of Edinburgh. If the word gets out that you’re trying to prove it, publicly, that’s not going to be a good situation. I could go on with other examples, but I did want to come back to the reason why this is critical to have it to all clauses.

I come back to the last government and the Premier at the time, who actually saw an opportunity to do something different here. That was with respect to sexualized violence in post-secondary institutions.

[2:15 p.m.]

What she recognized was that the right thing to do was to force public institutions to develop policies to actually ensure that they had sexualized violence policies to deal with it. The reason why — as I introduced the bill when the last government was in, and what passed, eventually, in a slightly different form — of course, is that public institutions have a vested interest in trying to ensure that actually they are deemed to be safe places for students to come.

What was happening, as I was getting told story after story from institution after institution…. There was no one that was particularly bad over another. They all had the problems, and it was systemic. The issues were kept below the surface, and nothing was done. But by forcing policy measures and a process to be in place, these issues now must be dealt with.

That comes to the issue of WCB and the presumptive clause for mental illness. If you are in an abusive work environment and you actually now report it and go on LTD, nothing gets done because there’s no incentive for the institution to do anything. There’s a fear that there might be, “Oh, if we react here, they might get mad at us” or: “Oh, we might do this.” But if we had a presumptive clause for mental health disorders, their WCB rates would start to go up for that institution if they started to see an awful lot of claims emerging from it.

I would have thought these supposed free marketers on the other side would have liked to see this financial measure to ensure that you are creating a process that actually incentivizes safe workplaces. I would have thought that members here, the so-called labour party, would have seen the importance of doing this — the importance of creating a stick and a carrot, the stick being in the workers compensation board premiums that every employer has to pay for covered workers.

Those go up in an unhealthy work environment. If you start to have a lot of accidents, a lot of people tripping and falling, breaking legs, on a lumber mill site, you know your premiums are going to go up. So there’s an incentive to make that workplace safe.

Again, there seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding in government — I don’t even have to talk about opposition, who’s abdicated their responsibility on this bill — to recognize that mental disorders are no different from physical disorders. You can say what you like in an election campaign. “We’re going to create a ministry of mental health and addictions.” That’s just lip service.

It’s kind of like saying to my friend from Saanich North and the Islands beside me: “We’re going to do truth and reconciliation with Indigenous people.” Indigenous communities are sick and tired….

Hon. Speaker, there’s a direct parallel between this analogy….

Deputy Speaker: Relevance to the bill, Member.

A. Weaver: There is. There’s a direct parallel between politicians saying they want to do truth and reconciliation, and their actions — or not thereof. In fact, Indigenous people are sick and tired of words. They want to see action. And it’s exactly the same — and therein lies the analogy — with mental health and addiction.

It’s really easy to say we’re destigmatizing mental health and addictions. So where’s the beef? Where’s the Alberta beef? Why aren’t you actually doing it? You have a ministry to do this. You have an opportunity to do it. You issued a private member’s bill, for heaven’s sake, in 2016 and 2017 that included 911 dispatchers. But we didn’t do it. We didn’t do this opportunity because of petty games by the B.C. Liberals, which actually didn’t follow through with what they said.

You know, this place doesn’t work. This place doesn’t work if we can’t trust that when we say we’re going to be up on something, that we will be up on something.

I took the opportunity immediately before lunch to show the member for Chilliwack, who actually had the amendments. He knew exactly what I was going to do. I told him the three amendments, the three phases. I was going to start with the “include all workers.” The second phase…. I mean I could read it in, because this is what I had planned to do, and this is relevant to the bill.

The second thing I was going to do, assuming that there was some objection for including all workers…. I would have given the opportunity for the minister to actually outline the direction he was going to take this legislation in the months ahead. I would have then talked about: “Okay, we’ll understand that. Let’s include nurses, social workers and 911 dispatchers right off the bat.” We know we’ve got so many examples. You’ve all received emails. Let’s put them in with the other first responders.

[2:20 p.m.]

Then I would have seen how that debate goes. If that didn’t work, I would have come back with the 911 dispatchers, because there is no reason why this bill does not include 911 dispatchers — or, more formally, 911 emergency communications operators and dispatchers — today. There’s no reason why it’s not there today. But they didn’t want to have a vote, because they are just playing politics.

Unfortunately, they don’t realize — again, with greatest respect — that I get two hours to outline my case at third reading. And I’m taking every minute of the two hours to outline why we should have done this, knowing that I probably wouldn’t have had members’ opposite support. They’ve had my amendments for three days, and the member for Chilliwack never got back to me about any views on anything about this. So clearly, it was a game It was a game. B.C. Liberals once more playing games at the expense of British Columbians.

I do see another school group here. I’d like to look to the member, my friend here. I will understand that I will just pause briefly, with leave, to allow him to introduce them.

Introductions by Members

M. Hunt: It’s my pleasure to give the member a break in the midst of his two-hour speech that he is giving. Again, it’s my pleasure to introduce to you the second of three classes that are here today from Surrey Christian School. They’re here with their teachers, their parents, who are chaperones, and others. I would ask the House to please make these wonderful students from Surrey Christian School very welcome to the House.

Debate Continued

A. Weaver: I will proceed. I believe there’s a third class coming. I look forward to the value provided to the introduction, at the start of the introduction, as well. Perhaps the member might want to tone that down; otherwise, leave may not be granted him a third time.

I do continue. I was talking about the importance of having a carrot and a stick, knowing full well that there are organizations where nothing is done. Nothing is done because there’s no incentive to do anything about abusive work environments with systemic harassment, systemic bullying.

I see another few teachers in the audience. Let me talk to them who are here and talk to the relevance of this case, so the children in the audience and their parents know what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about here — to the gallery — is the bill that’s called Bill 9, Workers Compensation Amendment Act. We’re now at third reading of that bill. We went from first reading, where it’s introduced, to second reading, where we made our points known.

Then the controversy which has led me to try to explains what’s been going on here was that at committee stage, where we go line by line, we had had an agreement that there would be a number of questions coming from the Liberals opposite. Then the member for Chilliwack, who knew all the amendments I was going to bring forward, decided to play some political games and stand down when I was three minutes late into the chamber so we couldn’t bring forward the amendments to the bill and have the discussion there.

The thing is, obviously, the member didn’t realize that at third reading, I get a full two hours to explain these amendments and what I was hoping to do and why this bill is on dodgy grounds for approval without these other bills.

One of the things I’ve been putting forward here is that in this bill is a presumptive clause. Right now if you suffer mental illness as a direct consequence of your workplace and you are covered under workers compensation, you must go to Workers Compensation and prove that your mental disorder is a direct consequence of your work.

You can imagine a firefighter has to see some horrific things or a police officer has to see some horrific things. This bill is actually giving firefighters and police officers the right to not have to prove to Workers Compensation that their mental disorder is a direct consequence of their workplace. Rather, if they have the psychiatric or psychological assessments, the medical assessments, that suggest it to be so, they will start getting benefits immediately that are better than long-term disability benefits. But Workers Compensation still has the ability to challenge it. It’s called a presumptive clause. It’s really important.

What is done in Alberta and Saskatchewan — to the gallery there — is that they have presumptive clauses for all workers. The examples I’ve been giving here…. I’ll give one that’s relevant to teachers. Teachers, for example….

Hon. Speaker, I don’t think you heard my example. You weren’t in the chair at the time.

My wife’s a teacher. Most of my family are teachers. Teachers have an amazing job. They get to instil knowledge in youth, particularly at that age when you guys are sponges for knowledge and it’s so exciting to actually try to get you to talk about what inspires you and to ask questions. You’re all scientists. Kids are born scientists. They always ask why, why, why? They’re always asking questions.

[2:25 p.m.]

Not all teachers have the best working environment. I know some who work in environments that one might argue are actually abusive. I know some who feel that they don’t get the support they need. In fact, I know some very specifically where duties to report under the act are such that when they report inappropriate issues that they must report, it falls upon the deaf ears of the administrators, the senior administration and the school boards. In one particular case, they started to get attacked for having the gall to raise this issue.

Can you imagine being a teacher when you know something wrong is happening to a child, or you know that a child is in a abusive family, and you’ve reported it, and nobody’s listening? You have to go into that classroom every day, every day, every day. You know as a teacher that you’re the first responder, because you’re the only voice that that child has — the only safe voice that that child has. But you feel powerless as a teacher to do anything because nobody’s listening to you. These are true stories. I know about that. I’m sure other teachers know teachers like that too.

What happens? Systemic, time after time after time…. You develop anxiety and depression issues. There’s no doubt. If you had broken your hand in the workplace because there was something inappropriate or there was some slippery soap on the floor, and you broke it on the job, you’d be covered by workers compensation. But if you happen to suffer depression and anxiety as a direct consequence of your workforce, you’d have to stand before the workers compensation and prove it. You’d have to prove it, even if you had psychological assessments and doctors notes saying it was. You’d have to relive these stories. You’d have to argue. You’d have to argue against a tribunal.

As the minister knows, that’s not the easiest thing to do, even with a broken arm, if there’s a challenge, because there’s no presumptive clause. Were there a presumptive clause, you’d be covered. You’d be covered and presumed that your illness was from your work, assuming you had the appropriate medical backup. And WCB could still challenge it down the road.

We had the opportunity in this bill to have a debate at committee stage about the amendments that these members opposite knew I was going to bring forward because I gave it to them. I was told: “We’re going to actually get back to you about them.” They never got back.

I was told that the member opposite had quite a number of questions on section 1 and that he knew I was going to come up. I was three minutes late. What an opportunity for him to play games, to shut down debate. That’s shameful. That’s shameful because it’s not doing what this place is supposed to do.

We here in British Columbia are supposed to debate the issues brought to us. We’re supposed to put our constituents front and centre. We’re supposed to challenge government when we see a bill, such an important bill, like this. When you’ve sat for three days with amendments before you, and you know what they’re going to be, we have a duty and responsibility to debate these, not to play games.

It’s a sad day. I don’t know what professions the parents are up there, but I suspect…. Maybe there’s an office worker up there. Maybe they know somebody in another job that works in an abusive environment, where the boss has no accountability to upper management and creates an environment purely out of insecurity that is abusive or harassing to an employee. But that employee can’t leave because they need the job. Here we had an opportunity in this bill to not only include police and fire and correction officers and sheriffs, but also to include, as did the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, all workers covered under the act.

Again, if the government truly believed in its commitment to dealing with the issues of mental health and addiction through the creation of a separate ministry, it would stop stigmatizing the difference between physical illness and mental illness, which is exactly what’s done here. It is only the physical response that we think is creating the mental illness. It is only the case of first responders who might have to respond to a car accident or police officers who might have to go into a home and see some horrific scene.

Those senses are your eyes. This is only responding to those people who are actually experiencing things through their eyes — not through their ears, but only their eyes. Only horrific sights. But we know that mental health disorders in the workplace come far beyond just the traumatic events.

[2:30 p.m.]

In fact, our own workers compensation legislation recognizes that there are two types of mental health disorders that can occur in the workplace. Some are traumatic, leading off to PTSD, and others are systemic, like harassment and bullying. It has recognized it right there. We’re saying that, okay, we recognize that there are two types. We recognize that. We recognize also that police officers and firefighters and paramedics — I can’t imagine what they have to go through — see a lot of the first type, the traumatic event. I’ll say it again. They see a lot of the first type, but there are others who experience the other first type daily.

The only reason I can think of why 911 dispatchers are not included is because a 911 dispatcher can’t see what is there; they only hear it. I would argue that if members in the government had recognized or read the literature — the master’s thesis that I brought forward yesterday, as an example — the statistics, they would see that in fact it’s very clear that sometimes the most profound mental health disorders and consequences come not so much from seeing something happen but by your inability to actually prevent something from happening, even though you wish you could.

I read the compassionate and compelling story by one emergency call receiver who had on the phone a young man — I don’t know if he was young — a man who had committed hara-kiri and whose entrails were hanging out. He phoned her, and she developed a rapport with that individual. Because he had a knife, she had to call in the emergency response team — or the dispatcher did. They wouldn’t go in until a spud gun was produced. The man was all distraught, and she was reprimanded initially for actually not getting off the phone.

Her PTSD was so profound that when the minister, the member for Vancouver-Hastings, in his speech yesterday thanked her…. He thanked her for informing him over the years about this issue of presumptive clause that she wasn’t covered by, a 911 dispatcher. She had a panic attack last night, watching this, because she was pleased to hear that the government was potentially going forward.

It’s good to see that we’re going to get some more debate from other members here. We can get a rip-roaring third reading debate here. I see some other members will be joining me, coming up in the debate. I look forward to my friend from Peace River South. He might be able to do the job that the member from Chilliwack never did, which is to actually raise issues and challenge government on this particular…. The member for Peace River South, a member who….

Deputy Speaker: Relevance to the bill, Member.

A. Weaver: Right. The member for Peace River South, as you know, hon. Speaker, is from the city of Dawson Creek, a wonderful part of town right in the centre of gas country. The question I hope he will address, in raising this, is those gas field workers. You can get physical accidents in the gas field. It happens all the time. You can get physical…. We have, you know, accidents on the construction site. If you break an arm, you’re covered. There are no presumptive issues, because it’s a physical injury.

What about if you’re the person who’s standing by as your co-worker gets run over by a truck? Your best friend’s daughter gets run over by a truck on the field. Or your best friend or your partner falls down and has a horrible accident on the other site. There’s no presumptive clause. You have to prove…. Even though this could have happened….

This physically debilitating, if not fatal, injury that happened on the workplace would be covered if that person survived. You would be covered if you broke your arm trying to help them. But you wouldn’t be covered unless you could prove that your subsequent PTSD or mental disorder was a direct consequence of your workplace. That’s wrong, hon. Speaker. That’s completely wrong.

[2:35 p.m.]

The province of Alberta recognized it was wrong. The province of Saskatchewan recognized it was wrong. In the case of 911 dispatchers, other provinces, including very recently the province of Nova Scotia, recognized it was wrong. It was wrong to actually only have a presumptive clause for professions that are first responders that see, as opposed to also hear or witness as bystanders or second responders.

Again, I do have some confidence, with that said — and I come back to it again. The Minister of Labour — it is Labour, I believe. I’ve had many discussions with him about this issue. I do understand, particularly from his union background, that he recognizes the issue is far broader than just police, fire, paramedics, first responders. I recognize that he realizes that emergency dispatchers are critical, and I’m hoping he will rise at third reading and afford me the opportunity of the words I was hoping to extract from him during committee stage to outline a pathway that he sees forward in terms of this bill.

I would like to give him that opportunity, and I’d like to give him that opportunity while I sit here and listen. With that, I hope that the minister is able to stand next, and I will sit and take my place at third reading and listen to the other debates.

M. Polak: We have come to a point in the discussion where the member has outlined some deep concerns that he has with respect to the way in which debate on this bill has unfolded. There is, however, in the process of undertaking debate, an established way of doing things. Bills can be moved. Amendments to the bills can be moved on the order paper, off the order paper. The preference, of course, is for those to be moved on the order paper. The member has made that clear a number of times in debate on various bills.

In this case, the amendments were on the order paper. There is, though, one requirement for those amendments to be moved, and that is that the member needs to be present.

He could have, indeed, asked someone else from his party to move his amendment, and it would have been discussed on the floor. Indeed, he could have asked one of his members, if he was unavoidably detained, to come into the House and move a recess, and he would have had an opportunity to move the amendment that I believe he is very passionate about.

It is, however, the practice of this House that when no other members rise, the vote is called. In this case, no other speakers rose after the questions from the critic, and since they did not take the floor, then….

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member.

Oak Bay–Gordon Head, another member has the floor.

M. Polak: In this case, no other speakers rose. The member was not present and, therefore, was unable to put forward his amendment, and the vote was called.

Now, the member is clearly seeking to blame the critic for the fact that he was late to the House. I won’t quibble about the amount of time except to say that three minutes, in my experience in this House, would have been an awfully quick amount of time for people to be seated, for the orders of the day to be called, for the committee chair to then take their seat and then also to proceed through the section, the title and then subsequently the reporting up and the moving of the third reading motion. I suspect that was probably longer than three minutes, but be that as it may.

The critic certainly has indicated, I think, throughout not only second reading but committee stage debate…. I think people would have already become alive to the fact that opposition is inclined to support this bill. Indeed, we are. It’s not the critic’s job to move the amendment for the member. If the member was unavoidably detained, as I said, there are all sorts of things that he could have done in that regard.

The member speaks of the amount of time spent on debate. This is a bill that I know many members are very passionate about in terms of the topics contained therein. This is a topic that many, many members are passionate about — the items that are contained therein. I know that one of my colleagues who at one time had ministerial responsibility for the file feels deeply, deeply passionate about these issues and certainly takes this very, very seriously.

[2:40 p.m.]

It is also the case in this House…. In fact, whether in my time as Opposition House Leader or in my time as a minister of government, it’s quite common that a bill that is not generating controversy between the two sides — a bill that opposition intends, actually, to support — finds itself without a significant amount of debate because there is already a significant amount of agreement. The measure of whether or not an opposition takes a bill or a motion seriously is not the measure of how much time was taken in debate; it’s what is said in debate.

I do certainly take issue with the member’s characterization of the critic’s work. I know the critic to be a hard-working person who delves deeply into his files.

Interjection.

M. Polak: I do believe that the member is sincere, but I am actually quite troubled that the member is so willing to insult the work of other members of this House at a time when the antidote to his problem was there in front of him, and he didn’t take it by arriving in the House in time to move his amendment.

I understand, from the member’s lengthy description, that he had a thorough plan for how this whole range of his amendments would have unfolded, and indeed, they could have been debated here on this floor. That’s all well and good, except that the member should have planned, also, to be here to move his amendment or planned to have one of his members of his caucus move a recess or move the amendment on his behalf.

In closing my comments with respect to this bill, I want to thank all members for their participation and contribution to the debate. The opposition is in support of the bill going forward, and we look forward now to the closing of third reading debate.

Hon. H. Bains: I just want to take this opportunity to thank all members who participated in the debate on Bill 9. The passion that you’ve seen in the speeches clearly shows the importance of the issue that we are debating — the importance of the bill and the people who will be provided support and coverage through this. It clearly shows that it’s timely, it’s needed, and it is long overdue.

I want to say to the member of the Third Party: I thank you for your passion. Your passion is my passion. I’m sure, if you listen to other members, their passion is also the same.

We all believe deeply that every worker who goes to work gets the highest protection, health and safety, and that they come home in the same shape that they went in. They deserve nothing less. Their families deserve nothing less.

We, as a state, have a responsibility to make sure that we provide them with the environment — at workplaces and outside — where they have that protection. That’s our responsibility, and that’s why we’re making improvements as we go forward.

I want to say that we all know…. Our relatives, our friends, our neighbours — everyone goes to work. They all go to work. They all face different challenges at workplaces, and many of them face traumatic incidents as part of their job. That’s what we are trying to cover here. For every member of our society who goes to work, even those who are doing housework, there are challenges. They can physically and mentally get hurt — even staying at home.

But what we are talking about are workplaces and what the workers must go through — the stress of the work, dealing with health and safety. Many of them get injured, and many of them never come home. Over 160 workers every year in British Columbia die due to workplace injuries. That’s too many. One death is too many.

[2:45 p.m.]

Therefore, I think it’s our responsibility — it’s my responsibility as the Minister of Labour — to make sure that our health and safety regime is such that they get the highest level of protection in workplaces and that we work with employers and workers and their representatives to make sure that we are always looking for new ways to provide that protection, the innovative way to provide that protection. We are doing that.

I also want to add, the debate…. I love debate in this House. Every time we are dealing with an issue, if we don’t have a thorough debate, it means that we haven’t done our job. That’s what the Leader of the Third Party is trying to do: engage in debate. I would have loved those amendments and to have discussion around those. I fully understand what the member is trying to do, because that passion is my passion as well.

I want to assure the Leader of the Third Party and the opposition members who are supporting this bill: this is not the end. This is the beginning.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

As soon as we finish this, I will be meeting with many members of our workforce, many different organizations and individual workers, who face traumatic experiences at their workplaces and come home with mental health disorders — who are living with mental health disorders. Many of them develop PTSD. That is too long for them to get help. We want to make sure we provide them support right in the beginning.

I’m going to work with all workers out there, all of their representatives, to make sure that they get the protection that they need. And the help they get when they need that help — that they get the support from the Workers Compensation Board when they need it, because they deserve nothing less. Every worker deserves to have our support, because they, along with their employer, create wealth for us. Many of them take very, very dangerous jobs. We must support them. We must provide them with the protection that they need.

This bill…. I couldn’t wait any longer. These are the first responders. We must move on. That’s why I brought it here earlier. As the Leader of the Third Party suggested, we will be working with…. I encourage all members of this House: come to me. I’d like to work with you. Give me your opinions. Give me your ideas on how we can improve the health and safety, especially mental health, of our workforce.

With that, I want to say that we have a lot of work to do. This is just the beginning. I will be encouraging every one of you to give me your ideas so that we can start to work with all workers in this province to give them the enhanced protection they need, especially on the mental health side. It is one of the most difficult injuries to deal with. Physical injuries, we know. They’re a little easier to deal with. We know. We can see it. The doctors can examine it and then start a treatment.

Mental health — it’s totally different. It’s totally different because there’s a stigma. People are suffering with that disease, alone. We need to encourage them to come out. We have this program, working with WorkSafe and my ministry: “Share it. Don’t wear it.” That campaign is now countrywide. We need to continue to enhance that area so that we encourage people to share their pain, to share what they are suffering with, so that we can support them and provide them with help — and if it’s work related, that they get support from workers compensation.

I want to thank every member of this House for the support that you have shown, and like I said, the work isn’t completed. We have a lot more work to be done. With that, I would say to all of the first responders: thank you very much for the support that you are giving. Let’s continue to work so that no worker in this province is left without the support that they need and in a timely fashion.

S. Furstenau: I just wanted to add a few words to the conversation about how the debate unfolded or, in fact, didn’t unfold this afternoon.

[2:50 p.m.]

Hansard has a record, but the committee met this afternoon at 1:35. There were no questions, and at 1:36, the committee rose. The members opposite were well aware of the Third Party Leader’s intention to introduce amendments at committee stage, and he had had conversations.

It’s very interesting to hear the minister speak about workers and that this bill is designed to protect workers in our province. I think that what happened this afternoon speaks, to some degree, to what can happen when we forget who we’re serving — and that there can be these opportunities that may seem like political opportunities, but they can take away from our capacity in this House as representatives of the people of this province to do the best work we possibly can on behalf of them.

To have no debate at committee, to have no questions, and to have not had these amendments entered and put up for debate means that we didn’t do our best work today in this chamber. For that, I think we should all feel some remorse, and I would hope that moving forward, we can recognize that it’s not always about parties. It shouldn’t be about parties. It should be about how we work most effectively, all of us, on behalf of the citizens of B.C. Today we didn’t achieve that because of this lost opportunity. I hope we learn a great lesson from this going forward.

Mr. Speaker: The question is third reading of Bill 9, Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2018.

Bill 9, Workers Compensation Amendment Act, 2018, read a third time and passed.

Hon. B. Ralston: I call committee debate on Bill 12.

Committee of the Whole House

BILL 12 — TENANCY STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2018

The House in Committee of the Whole (Section B) on Bill 12; L. Reid in the chair.

On section 1.

Hon. S. Robinson: I’d like to introduce some staff that I have here with me. I’ve got Brad Sparrow, Wendy Harrison and Greg Steves here joining me today. I want to thank them for their hard work in putting this together.

S. Sullivan: Section 1 removes the requirement that a notice to end tenancy under a fixed term tenancy agreement must end the tenancy effective on a date that is not earlier than 12 months after the date the notice is received. I would like to ask the minister: what is the purpose of this section? What problem was she trying to solve?

[2:55 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: We wanted to make sure that, whether it’s fixed-term or any other kind of tenancy, it had the same 12-month period, that everyone in the mobile home and the manufactured home community would have the same amount of time in order to organize their life for the next chapter, organize their homes for their move.

S. Sullivan: Yes, so this section requires longer notice for eviction under the Manufactured Home Park Tenancy Act. This is increasing the notice for evictions. Is that not correct?

Hon. S. Robinson: This is to ensure that everyone gets the same 12 months notice regardless of their tenancy agreements.

Sections 1 and 2 approved.

On section 3.

S. Sullivan: Yes, so this changes the compensation amount for a manufactured home park tenancy eviction from 12 months to a number set by regulation.

This does seem to be a trend for this government — to remove a specific number and give the power to the minister in regulation. The question would be: why remove the transparency that comes with listing the figures in the act?

Hon. S. Robinson: I know that the member will appreciate that we need to have the flexibility to ensure that we’re keeping up with changing costs over time.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

What we’re doing here is making sure that there’s some fair compensation, and we want to make sure that we have the ability to adjust that as costs for these homes change over time.

S. Sullivan: The news release that was issued says that the compensation will increase. However, this section gives the power to the minister, with no guarantee the value will increase. Can the minister confirm that she believes that the compensation will increase?

Hon. S. Robinson: Yes, it will.

S. Sullivan: Does she have an estimate of what the new value for compensation and failure to undertake the prescribed use will be?

Hon. S. Robinson: Yes, we’ve done some preliminary analysis, and we’re looking at $20,000 as a flat rate.

S. Sullivan: Now, the director will have the power to excuse the compensation from section 3(2). I wanted to get a sense of what the minister is thinking about in terms these extenuating circumstances. I was wondering if she could give any examples of what she would consider “extenuating circumstances.”

Hon. S. Robinson: Let’s say a landlord was proceeding to make the changes. They had all the permits and were ready to move ahead, and something catastrophic happened in their family. They had to delay activity on their plans, so that sidetracked them for a period of time, or the landlord themselves passed away, and now the family has to sort out what the next steps were.

Those are some of the kinds of extenuating circumstances that I think we can all appreciate happen, and we need to have the room and the flexibility to accommodate that.

[3:00 p.m.]

A. Olsen: Just back to the $20,000 figure that was just floated. I’m just wondering. What is the rationale for choosing this amount? The minister suggested that there was some work that had been done on it, but what is the rationale behind $20,000?

Hon. S. Robinson: We took a look at what the actual costs are. We wanted it to be grounded in something real. It had to be based on something. I appreciate the question. When you take a look at what it actually costs to move a manufactured home to another location, it’s about $20,000.

A. Olsen: I’m just wondering. In the backgrounder here from the government, they’re saying that it was a 12-month pad rental, that the rentals vary. The way it’s currently now, the rentals vary. Do we have an average of how much…? I’m trying to figure out what the difference is between what it is now — generally, because the pad rentals vary; I recognize that — to this $20,000 number.

Hon. S. Robinson: Right now, the way it exists, it’s a 12-month pad rental, which is about $400 or $500, but it ranges from $200 to $700. That’s what the compensation is now.

The reality is that people, when they get an eviction, want to be able to hang on to their home, and they need to move it, if they can find a place to move it to. The moving costs are quite significant. The current structure doesn’t even cover the actual moving costs. We wanted to make sure that it was grounded in something that was meaningful to people.

Section 3 approved.

On section 4.

S. Sullivan: Yes, section 4 requires landlords to pay additional compensation if a manufactured home is unable to be moved. This requires the landlords to pay the costs. It sounds very good on the face of it. But I’m just wondering about tenants that allow their assets to be…. Well, they don’t keep up their assets, and they allow it to deteriorate. I’m just wondering about the rationale of requiring the landlord to pay for the tenant not looking after their own property.

Hon. S. Robinson: The assessed values are updated annually. If people are unable or unwilling to invest in their asset, of course, it deteriorates. The value deteriorates. The landlord is only responsible for paying the difference between the assessed value and the flat rate of $20,000.

A. Olsen: Just within the regulations that the minister is considering, are there going to be criteria to determine whether a place can or cannot be moved — can or cannot be relocated?

Hon. S. Robinson: Yes, there will be criteria set in regulation for determining that.

A. Olsen: Thank you, Minister. Is it possible for you to clarify what some of those conditions might be? I recognize it’s not going to be in detail, but perhaps some of the high-level conditions that you might be using to determine if a unit cannot be moved.

Hon. S. Robinson: I’m not a house mover. I have staff here to help me sort that out. It’s really the transportation permits that are the key. It has to be road-worthy in order for it to actually be transported, and if they can’t get a transportation permit, then it can’t be moved. That’s the key factor. There might be some local government permits as well, which they might not be able to get. That would also be an indication that they couldn’t move their home.

Section 4 approved.

On section 5.

[3:05 p.m.]

S. Sullivan: Okay, so this is about ensuring that tenants are not responsible for the manufactured home disposal costs. I guess it’s just a question about the purpose of this section. This requires that a landlord is responsible, financially, for incurring the cost for the disposal of a derelict unit that they do not own. I’m just wanting to know what the purpose of this section is.

Hon. S. Robinson: The purpose here is to ensure that there is no clawback.

We need to remember here what the context is. It’s where people are told that their home is no longer available, that the pad rental is no longer available. They have to move their home; they have to vacate their home. Their home isn’t movable if they can’t get transportation permits, or if their municipal bylaws don’t allow it to be moved, or if there is no space, if there’s no place, if there’s no other manufactured home community in which to move.

They can get their $20,000. The difference…. Let’s say it’s valued at $40,000. So they could get a total of $40,000. It’s the $20,000 flat, and then the difference, up to $40,000. Then they have to be responsible, now, for the disposal. That’s a clawback. The idea here is to make sure that people have the resources to actually move and find another place to live.

We were seeing this happening across communities in British Columbia, where manufactured home park owners are turning these manufactured homes into places where there are highrises being built and significant opportunities for density. But the people who had made their home here are displaced, and that’s certainly a challenge. We want to make sure that they have the opportunity to find a home that suits their needs.

A. Olsen: I’m just wondering if there was any consideration about how this is going to impact potential mobile home park owners — future mobile home park owners.

Looking at this now…. I recognize what the bill is intending on doing but also want to consider what the unintended consequences of it might be, in that this is fairly punitive. I’m just wanting to know where the balance is, from the minister’s perspective.

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to be clear. This isn’t about being punitive. This is about making sure that people get some fair value for their home. We think it’s not about punishing anybody.

We know, when the opportunity comes to sell a piece of land, that that gets built into what the actual costs are. There are two costs to dispose of these units. It just depends on who’s going to take responsibility for it. Right now this bill proposes that it’s the landlord.

Section 5 approved.

On section 6.

S. Sullivan: This is the one that extends the notice period for the renovation and demolition evictions. It extends this period from two months to four months.

I wanted to ask the minister: could she explain why a subsection (6) eviction is materially different from other evictions and needs a longer notice period?

[3:10 p.m.]

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the question. We know that in the case the member refers to, this is happening quite frequently, particularly where there’s opportunity to invest in apartments and in terms of renovating them. We want to make sure that they have….

They know well in advance what their plans are. We want to make sure, if they know well in advance what their plans are — and it takes a long time to put all these plans in place — that the benefit actually goes to the tenant in these instances, that they have the benefit of having the time they need to find a new home.

S. Sullivan: Now, also in this is the 30-day time frame for filing a dispute, which is doubling from the other time frame. As I think about what a landlord has to do in order to get all of these working parts together, it’s often quite complicated to organize all of the many pieces that have to go into this. They would have to have every last piece in place before they can then give notice, which is then another four months. I’m just wondering: is that making it harder, then, for the people that want to renovate, want to improve their rental units?

Hon. S. Robinson: Well, in light of the member’s comments about the lack of supply, and given the challenges around a very tight rental market, I certainly can appreciate his comments. We also need to remember that renters in a tight rental market need as much notice as possible in order to continue to do the things that they need to do, which is continue to go to work, continue to take care of their children, continue to manage their family and make sure that there’s a roof over everyone’s heads.

That’s what this is intended to do. It’s intended to give people the kind of time they need to not only find accommodation that meets their needs, but also, should a landlord not be, actually, well intentioned, there’s enough time for them to calm down, read through what their rights are, make sure they understand that there is an opportunity for them to dispute, learn the system — because if they’ve never had to do that before, it’s not always that easy — and file for an arbitration so that they can be heard by a third party.

We think that people need the time in order to do that so that they understand what their rights are and that the system is fair.

Section 6 approved.

On section 7.

S. Sullivan: Yes. This increases the amount a landlord must pay to 12 months’ rent if the purpose for an eviction was not completed in a reasonable time frame. I guess the natural question was: what’s the rationale for this 12 months’ rent?

[3:15 p.m.]

Was this just simply a round number, or was there any modelling or any estimates that the minister went through to get to that number?

Hon. S. Robinson: I know that the member knows that currently the system is two months, and it’s not much of a deterrent. We’re looking for a significant amount that would be a deterrent. This is about preventing landlords from misusing the Residential Tenancy Act. We want them to be….

I believe that most landlords are good landlords and want to be good landlords. We want to make sure that those who are choosing to circumvent that can feel the pain of doing that, of being disingenuous. We want to make sure that there’s enough of a deterrent for that bad behaviour.

S. Sullivan: This section and the following section refer to a reasonable time period. Is it the minister’s intention that issues around reasonableness will have to be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis? I want to know more about this reasonable time period. And will that have to be case by case?

Hon. S. Robinson: The reasonable period is actually already in the act, and arbitrators have been interpreting “reasonable period” since 2004. What it means is that a landlord has to take action to accomplish the purpose as soon as reasonably possible, given the circumstances. I’m sure the member can well appreciate that there can be a number of circumstances. So we have arbitrators make that determination based on the facts before them.

A. Olsen: Similar to section 3, just wondering how the bad-faith exemptions will be defined in this section.

Hon. S. Robinson: We’re not making any changes about the bad-faith component. The only thing we’re changing is the amount of compensation.

A. Olsen: So then just to be clear on that. You have somebody who intends to act in good faith, vacating somebody for a family member to move into…. I’m just thinking of a situation in which a landlord may be acting in good faith, but then that situation comes to an end. The person that’s moving in is passing away. How does that get handled in this situation?

Hon. S. Robinson: I’m sorry. I didn’t understand the very first question. I appreciate that the member took the time to explain it.

Again, we recognize that there can be some extenuating circumstances, and that’s really up to the arbitrator. We do imagine the case where someone does do all the right things, and something goes sideways. For example, they were intending to have a parent move in, and they did everything right. Then the parent, for example, can no longer live independently, and they have to go into care. As a result, one could, I guess, make an argument that it was bad faith when, in fact, that was never the intention. Something happened that didn’t allow them to follow through.

The arbitrator has the discretion to recognize and address that should that need to happen.

M. Hunt: I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

M. Hunt: Just to give the minister a little break in the midst of her defending her bill, it is my absolute pleasure to introduce the third group of students from Surrey Christian, who are here with their teacher and with their parents to come and enjoy the processes.

I think it’s really informative for them, at this time, to be able to come and actually watch the process by which the real bills happen and the real process happens, as the minister is required to defend her work from the critics in the opposition.

I would ask that the House would make these wonderful students welcome here today.

[3:20 p.m.]

Debate Continued

T. Stone: I just wanted to weigh in with a question or two in this particular section. I do appreciate that the minister was asked about how “reasonable” time period will be defined. I guess my question is at a bit of a higher level here. When we look at the change here, going from two months to 12 months, when we have an undefined phrase — reasonable period of time — when we look at some of the other changes that have been layered on to landlords through other amendments provided for in this bill…. The same goes for the next couple of sections that we’ll be talking about in a few moments, particularly section 9 as well.

I’m just wondering if the minister can advise the House whether her ministry has done some analysis or some modelling, recognizing that it’s very difficult to strike that balance. I think we all agree that we want to make sure that those unscrupulous landlords out there — that there are much better teeth in the legislation to protect the rights of tenants from unscrupulous practices.

We also don’t want to go so far as to layer on so many additional measures that serve to have the unintended consequence of resulting in some landlords saying: “You know what? We’re done. We’re not going to be in this business anymore. That project that we were going to proceed with we’re not going to do anymore.” Or it won’t be rental stock, in which case we’ve actually made the existing challenge of available stock for people who want to rent much more difficult.

In the context of this particular section, I’m just wondering if the minister could again advise this House as to what analysis, what modelling the ministry has done to try to assess what the impacts are, if any, that these changes will have on overall rental stock in communities that really need more.

Hon. S. Robinson: I appreciate the balance that the member was referring to, but this section right here is really about making sure that vexatious landlords are deterred from evicting people when they don’t need to be evicted. We’ve certainly been hearing stories, and we’ve certainly….

I think all of us, all of our MLA offices, have received phone calls from people who are evicted because the landlord is doing a renovation that really isn’t an investment in their property; it’s a renovation of paint or carpet where people don’t actually need to be evicted. They’re using that as an opportunity to actually increase the rents, because they get a new tenant in. They increase the rents, and with a two-month penalty, it’s the cost of doing business, so they’ll pay the penalty. We want to stop that practice.

We’ve certainly had conversations with LandlordBC, and they want to stop that practice. They recognize that. It’s not the intent of the legislation, then. If you don’t have something that’s significant, that keeps people from doing it, there are those landlords that will misuse it, misuse the opportunity to make valid investments.

We want to make sure that we get the right balance, so making sure that we have a deterrent there that will not only keep people from those vexatious evictions but also recognize those who are doing it in good faith, who are actually doing a significant investment in their rental stock — making sure that the electrical is up to code, the plumbing is up to code. Putting in those investments that protect that stock that requires an eviction in order to get that work done…. That they also have all the permits and all of the…. That they’ve done all of the work that needs to go into doing that so that they can invest in that stock. We recognize that that’s important too.

This is about trying to find that balance, and we believe we’ve struck it right here.

[3:25 p.m.]

T. Stone: Thank you to the minister. I do not doubt for a second that the minister’s intentions here are sound in wanting to address the unscrupulous practices of some landlords. I’m certain that she would agree with me that we’re talking about a very small subsection of all the landlords out there.

I guess I just really want to convey the concerns that I have heard. I’ve heard from lots of tenants. I have also heard from lots of landlords.

When looking at it again, this provision, in and of itself, doesn’t seem so bad. But there is concern about a layering-on of new requirements. This is a sixfold increase in the costs. Perhaps the two months didn’t do it. Maybe six months would have. Twelve months seems like a bit of a big leap from the two months.

But I come back to my question from a moment ago, and that is: can the minister speak to any analysis or any modelling that her ministry has done that would address the concern that some have, myself included, as to any unintended consequences that may flow from a layering-on of these new provisions insofar as the availability of rental stock in communities that really need it?

Hon. S. Robinson: Again, when it comes to, certainly, the section around the vexatious behaviours of some landlords, it is about deterring their behaviour and their choices. When they are choosing to use a piece of legislation to evict someone but they’re not actually doing the investments that are expected, then we need to find a place where they’re going to be deterred from doing that. It’s so that if somebody says, “You don’t have the permits,” it’s going to be painful to them. It’s not just the cost of doing business.

Trying to find that sweet spot isn’t always easy. The member suggests maybe six months would have done it. I would just argue that the way through…. If a landlord doesn’t want this burden, then they will be forthright. If they are choosing to invest in their rental stock and that requires eviction, they need to make sure that they get it all right, that they do it appropriately, that they follow the rules. That’s what this is about. It’s making sure that people follow the rules.

T. Stone: Thank you, Minister. Again, I think we agree on the general premise here of what we’re trying to do. I guess it’s just really the concern of striking that balance. There are previous sections of this bill that we’ve talked about where the government felt it was okay to move certain requirements into regulation. Perhaps this could have been one area where the government could have moved this into regulation, as well, and gone with a slightly lower number to see if it works and ratcheted it up as required.

My last question relates to the adjudication of any disputes here around a reasonable time period. Obviously, it will be the director of the residential tenancy branch that will oversee that adjudication process.

I’m just wondering if the minister is anticipating a significant spike in disputes. Or has there been any analysis done to determine that? And then, related to that: if there is an anticipated increase in the disputes relating to this provision, does the minister anticipate requiring more funding for the residential tenancy branch in order to be able to handle this increased workload in a timely fashion on behalf of both tenants and landlords?

Hon. S. Robinson: We’re expecting everyone to follow the rules. If everyone plays by the rules and follows the rules, then we’re not expecting a significant increase in disputes. If people follow the rules, then there tend to be less disputes. But we also have just increased the budget for the residential tenancy branch by $7 million over three years, so they are well resourced to continue building their capacity.

T. Stone: Sorry, I just can’t help myself — with one last question here. I come back to “reasonable time period.” I mean, that’s very subjective. It will be the director who will determine what is reasonable and what is not reasonable on a case-by-case basis, which means the director will take into account the circumstances that pertain to each case.

[3:30 p.m.]

I would like to give the minister an opportunity to perhaps just outline what some of those extenuating circumstances could be — issues in one’s personal life, inability to find secure contractors to do the renovations in a timely…. Whatever they might be.

I think we agree that this is not…. I’m not disputing the fact here that if everyone plays by the rules, then there’s no additional work for the director. That is not likely to be the case.

The issue in contention here will be the reasonable time period, and the application of that fairly vague phrase on a case-by-case basis, which I hope doesn’t lead to a spike in disputes, but it very well could.

Could the minister comment on that?

Hon. S. Robinson: I think maybe I have more faith in humanity than the member does around people playing by the rules. But there is certainly appreciation that there could be things like labour shortages that would impact the ability to start a significant renovation. That could be a challenge — or something in someone’s personal life.

Like I said before, we infused a significant amount of money into the residential tenancy branch that has been starved for some time — making sure that there are the resources necessary to address these kinds of challenges.

Sections 7 and 8 approved.

On section 9.

S. Sullivan: This gives tenants the right of first refusal in the case of an eviction due to renovation. The clause that got my attention is clause (2): “If a tenant has given a notice under subsection (1), the landlord, at least 45 days before the completion of the renovations or repairs, must give the tenant” notice and agreement.

This brings to mind the question about renovations. Whenever I do something like this or I hear about something like renovation being done, you always multiply by 2.5 whatever you think it’s going to be.

So how would the landlord truly know when the renovations will be complete? They have to give this offer 45 days from when they’re complete. What about when renovations take a lot longer than is expected? A tenant may be part of a tenancy they’re signed on to but are unable to occupy the unit.

Hon. S. Robinson: I want to thank the member for his question.

The reason for 45 days is we want to make sure that tenants have adequate time to give notice to end their current tenancy, so they are not in the position of having to pay rent on two units. I think that the member would agree that that would be fair.

But also, we need to remember that we’re talking about major renovations that are a significant undertaking and that require a lot of planning and oversight.

I appreciate that for many who do their own renovation or a renovation that’s not on a commercial scale, there’s often lots of bleed time or empty time or waiting time. But we need to remember that landlords where there are five or more units are professional landlords, typically. They are very experienced, and they understand their business undertaking.

So I think that, in this case, 45 days is sufficient notice for them to know when the units are going to be essentially complete. There might be…. If there are a couple of doorknobs that need to get put on, I’m sure that they can find a way to make that work. These are sophisticated operations that understand what their timelines are and how to deliver a product.

S. Sullivan: I’m not sure whether we should consider a building with five units rental maybe…. Are they considered sophisticated? Are all of them sophisticated? Or even if one is very sophisticated, I don’t think anybody can really truly make these kinds of predictions that the renovations will go according to plan.

So I do worry that there may be an issue where 45-day notice is given, and the tenant then gives notice that they’re going to leave. Then we get to the situation where something has happened, and the renovation didn’t go as quickly as they thought, and there’s no place for them to move into. Yet they’ve now given their notice.

[3:35 p.m.]

I worry about some of the logistics around that, and if that’s been properly thought through in this legislation.

Hon. S. Robinson: Based on our consultation with the stakeholder group, it was certainly felt that 45 days was sufficient. It becomes part of the planning of the renovation — that 45 days.

A. Olsen: I think the minister just provided some insight into the question I’m about to ask. I myself and the member for Vancouver–West End are part of a rental housing task force.

Some of the specifics in this bill…. I’m just wondering if maybe you could comment about the specifics that have come up in this bill and then the work that’s going to be done in seeking it further. I’m assuming this has come from some consultations which have happened.

I’m certain that we’ll get some more clarity, but I’m just looking at this bill. There are some very specific numbers, yet there’s going to be some work ahead. Maybe you can provide a little bit of insight into that.

Hon. S. Robinson: There’s certainly a lot of work to do to modernize the Residential Tenancy Act. Like I said earlier in my comments, many of the MLAs here in this House have received lots of concern from renters over the years.

This is another round of work that we’ve undertaken to address some of the challenges in a very tight rental market, recognizing that we need to strike a balance between renters and landlords. This is about a relationship, making sure that the relationship between the two parties works well.

What we’ve done in this case…. Earlier in the fall, we closed the fixed-term-lease loophole. We eliminated the geographic rent increase. We thought that was really important. We had certainly enough information about making that happen.

Here’s another piece of work that we’ve done. We’ve made a specific choice to bring it forward now, because renters are tired of waiting, and I think landlords are as well. I think they’re looking for more clarity and more modernization. The task force is to go out and take a look at the work we’ve done here. If there’s more that we need to be doing in order to make sure that the renter-landlord relationship works better, then we’re certainly prepared to do that and make the refinements necessary.

People couldn’t wait anymore. We needed to make sure that there was fairness in the system, that there were sufficient deterrents, that landlords wouldn’t misuse the opportunity — to have an opportunity to invest in their asset and use it just as a way to get more rent. So we’ve put in some deterrent and are also giving people more time, of course, to file their disputes, as well as to get more time to find alternate accommodation.

In this particular piece, we’ve put in this right of first refusal, recognizing that was an important component. There certainly are some questions out there. We’ve heard from some tenants and from some landlords around what the rents should be. We need to do more work on that to find out what would be appropriate.

I’m really hoping that people share that with the task force so that if we do need to come back to this, we can, and we’ll have good information to do that work with.

S. Chandra Herbert: Thank you to the minister for bringing forward this legislation.

I just wanted to clarify, under section 9, right of first refusal. I’ve worked with a number of folks who have taken this question through to the Supreme Courts before. One thing I just wanted to make sure — and I know the minister referenced it in second reading debate — is the question of the Barrie decision.

[3:40 p.m.]

The Supreme Court found that reasonable accommodation by a tenant of the need for renovations was found to be completely within keeping of the act, that security of tenure was a goal of the legislation. Simply new cupboards — or even, potentially, moving a wall socket from one wall to the other — did not make it necessary to have vacant possession of a unit, and the tenancy could continue. Even, I believe, in some cases, if the tenant had to be out of the unit for a number of days, possession of the unit would continue. The tenancy agreement continues, and thus, right of first refusal wouldn’t be required because they would continue in the same tenancy.

The reason I ask is that certainly bringing this in will give some tenants the ability to go and see whether or not what was said would have to be done would be done, which I can see is a benefit in a few cases. Sometimes people will say they’re going to do renovations then don’t actually do them.

I guess the concern here is making sure that we’re not dissipating or diminishing the precedent set, which suggested that if a tenant could be accommodated, they should be, in the sense of up to a certain number of months or up to a certain amount of cost. I know that’s still to be defined through legislation or the committee’s work or other processes. I just wanted to make sure that in bringing this in, we are not in any way endangering or diminishing the decisions that came through the Barrie decision.

Hon. S. Robinson: This absolutely respects previous decisions. In fact, this actually tightens and strengthens the protections for renters. Again, we want to point out that eviction for renovation should always be a last resort.

For the example that the member used around moving a socket, that is not a condition under which someone would need to vacate the unit. Maybe I’m a little bit Pollyanna around this stuff, but I would imagine that landlords understand that. The expectation is that they understand that.

S. Chandra Herbert: I like the minister’s positivity and positive behaviour. I think most landlords would agree that that would seem unreasonable. However, as we know, sometimes we deal with those who would not. Certainly there have been a number of cases, thus the Supreme Court decisions, which have resulted from landlords not following the rules as they are and attempting to abuse them to force people out.

I appreciate the minister’s action to try and tighten these things, make them clearer, and I certainly hope that it will be really clear in the education around these changes that this does not diminish the need to accommodate tenants. I know the minister understands that as we’ve had these conversations.

I just wanted to make sure it was absolutely clear, on the record, so that if these were ever interpreted in courts of law, the intent was clear. What stands, stands, and certainly, this is not meant, in any way, to diminish the existing rights of tenants as have been developed through the courts. I appreciate the minister being clear on that. Much appreciated.

Sections 9 to 14 inclusive approved.

Title approved.

Hon. S. Robinson: Hon. Chair, I move that the committee rise and report the bill complete without amendment.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 3:43 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Report and
Third Reading of Bills

BILL 12 — TENANCY STATUTES
AMENDMENT ACT, 2018

Bill 12, Tenancy Statutes Amendment Act, 2018, reported complete without amendment, read a third time and passed.

[3:45 p.m.]

Hon. C. James: I call next the estimates for the Minister of Labour.

Committee of Supply

ESTIMATES: MINISTRY OF LABOUR

(continued)

The House in Committee of Supply (Section B); R. Chouhan in the chair.

The committee met at 3:47 p.m.

On Vote 34: ministry operations, $12,638,000 (continued).

M. Bernier: If it entertains the Chair, if we can just call for a three-minute recess, please.

The Chair: The House will be in recess for five minutes.

The committee recessed from 3:48 p.m. to 3:50 p.m.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

J. Martin: Thank you to the minister and staff as we continue the estimates.

There were a couple more questions, still, with the report that we left off with the other day. One of the things that I was curious about was…. The FWC website outlines the details for the second report on minimum-wage increase for farmworkers, liquor servers, live-in camp leaders, live-in home support workers, resident caretakers.

I understand that these were basically excluded from the initial report, and a subsequent report is going to be addressing these, but I have a little bit of a concern with this being pushed on to the second phase and being deferred. Statistics Canada found that women are concentrated in these gendered industries such as caregiving, accommodation and food services at more than double the rate of men.

It would seem, if there is some urgency about addressing the minimum wage as just not being acceptable, given the cost of living, that that is even more so for women. I would like the minister, if possible at this time, to rationalize why this was put off and not one of the forefront articles in the first report.

Hon. H. Bains: I think the member knows that in the terms of reference for the Fair Wages Commission, I asked them to come back with their report within 90 days. The first report came. When they delivered the first report, they dealt with the general minimum-wage increase. Also in the report, they suggested that the alternate wage rates, those five groups that the member mentioned…. They said that they needed more time to delve into the complexities dealing with those five areas.

They advised me through their report that the report would come in March. I’ve got that report now, I’m reviewing it, and within days, we will be making a decision. Now, I fully agree and acknowledge that yes, the vast majority of workers working in, especially, the liquor service and farms are women, yes. The disparity between wages of men and women is even wider in this area.

That’s what the Fair Wages Commission’s role was, to look into that area. How do we help these workers who are employed in these five different areas? Within days, I will be making a decision so that we can deal with the report that was delivered to me just a while ago.

J. Martin: Thank you once again. Can the minister comment on the extent to which there is going to be a follow-up briefing with representatives from these particular sectors, given that they occupy a kind of unique area in terms of the workforce and the way they’re compensated?

[3:55 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: It is important. I think one of the basic fundamentals of having the Fair Wages Commission establishment was to have a wide range of consultations so that they’d speak to business groups, unions, workers, academics, economists and individuals. And they did that. As you know, the details of their consultations and where they went were widely publicized.

I did have a concern that I share with the member. It is that during the period that they were doing consultations in the agricultural sector, that is not a time when most of the workers are working. So I’m delving to see how much consultation took place there, because the workers would not be working at that time.

It’s also a reality in the agricultural industry, especially in the Lower Mainland, that most of the workers are South Asians and elders. This is the time that they take to go and visit their families in India. Even if it wasn’t a farming season, a harvest season, they weren’t here — even if they wanted to go and attend.

I think there is a little concern there, but I want to delve into the report thoroughly and see what they have done. I’m hoping that they’ve done everything that we asked them to do. So we’ll see what the report says. I’ll be making decisions on that report in the coming days.

J. Martin: The major criticism that I, as critic, and others have raised with the first report is that there was a very short time span between the announcement of the first hike to the minimum wage and when it was actually going to be implemented. It was a grand total of 12 weeks. That was an area of concern from a number of employers who…. The way they plan their budget and their labour expenses generally requires an awful lot more than 12 weeks to make the books work.

In terms of this unique group of these five occupations — particularly, again, agreeing with the minister that agriculture is the major one here — is there an expectation that this will come about in similar fashion with a very short and, in some cases, unmanageable timeline? Or will we be able to give the sectors a little more heads-up for what planning they may have to do to accommodate whatever increases are announced by the ministry?

[4:00 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: I think the member knows that when we made the first announcement, there was an expectation that the minimum wage would be increased. Also, the signal to those five alternate wage rates was that the report is coming, that there’s a chance that the minimum wage in those areas will also increase. So I fully understand, and I think we’ll keep that in mind when we make that decision.

J. Martin: Thank you very much, Minister. Probably the final task of this commission is going to be a report on their own fate — on whether the commission should exist past their mandate or whether they should dissolve after the third report comes in. It’s kind of an interesting thing to task a panel with, but I can appreciate why it was done.

What does the minister believe is the best course of action with whatever takes place coming out of that report? Will the minister have a preference one way or the other? Or is that going to be a completely autonomous decision by the panel?

Hon. H. Bains: I think we engaged in this discussion last time we were doing estimates. The Fair Wages Commission had a recommendation in their first report about their future, and their recommendation was for their work to continue. We haven’t adopted that recommendation yet, but we are going to allow them to continue on with the third report that they will be producing, which is to find ways to deal with the discrepancies between the living wage and the minimum wage.

They perhaps will come back with more recommendations about their future. And ongoing, in the future, how do we deal with the minimum wage increases? They may have some ideas. They may suggest that they are the body that should be established. We’ll make that decision when we see that report, but right now I’m waiting for them to go and get engaged and start working on the third report. Once that report comes, we’ll make that decision at that time.

J. Martin: Is there any particular data set that the panel has accessed or will be using as they start to dial in and mine down into the livable wage, which is going to be a very awkward and complex formula as we move from jurisdiction to jurisdiction? It’s further complicated because it’s a very fluid data set, given the transitory nature of some industries to come and go in different jurisdictions of the province, with boom times, bust times, etc. It doesn’t accelerate or decelerate at the same rate in every region of the province. I’m wondering what data sources the commission is going to be able to avail itself of to undertake this very complex task.

[4:05 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: Good question, but I dare not delve into that area, because this is the area of expertise that the Fair Wages Commission will be dealing with. If they don’t have their own…. If you read the first report, they have considered a wide range of different areas where they did collect that data. They engaged some experts — economists and Stats Canada and other places.

I agree with the member. This is going to be probably the most complex area of their report, because it is not that easy to deal with. How do we deal with the living wage, on one hand, and minimum wage on the other? Different areas, different regions of the province have different issues along that. As I think I said the last time, minimum wage in 100 Mile House or the living wage in 100 Mile House may be different than in Chilliwack, versus Surrey and Victoria.

They all will be considering…. I don’t know what they will do. Will they consider region? Will they consider city by city. I don’t know. I’ll leave that up to them. That’s the role that they are given, and I think that, so far, they haven’t failed me. I have full confidence that they will be able to deal with this area. They have the skills and knowledge and expertise among three of them — then any additional information they need, any additional data, initial research they need to have for their perusal to get whatever they wish to get in order to do the work that they want to do to deliver that report.

D. Barnett: I appreciate the work you’re doing, but I would like to know how you are in consultation with rural and remote British Columbia cattle ranchers and those that live off of any grids.

Hon. H. Bains: If I understand the member correctly, if you’re still talking about the Fair Wages Commission and how they are consulting with the ranchers and farmers in that area…. I see the nod.

They develop their own criteria. They develop their own way of consulting. There’s a website. My understanding is that they also advertised in the area that they were visiting, and they encouraged people to come in person, on line or in writing. Anybody who wished to have any suggestion was encouraged to come any which way they could.

I will tell you that there were some farmers who felt that they may not have been able to give enough information in the time that they were given, so I encouraged them to write to the Fair Wages Commission. Then we made sure that the Fair Wages Commission received that information, and it was confirmed they did.

The idea is to get as much as information as possible, not to deny anybody, and then advertise widely to ensure that we hear from British Columbians in all different sectors and in all different regions.

In my view, they’ve done that. I haven’t heard any complaints that they were not able to consult with or their wishes were ignored — unless the member has something. I think that’s what they did, and that’s what I’m satisfied with. They did reach out and asked as many people as possible to come and give their input.

At the end of the day, it’s about those people and those small businesses — large businesses not that much, but small businesses, especially, which are non-union. We are talking about a minimum wage which is setting the standard for non-union sectors. I think that’s what they did — my understanding.

D. Barnett: Thank you, Minister, but you must realize that in rural and remote places in British Columbia, there is no Internet. There are no cell phones. There is no newspaper.

[4:10 p.m.]

Some of these people come to town very seldom. So at the end of the day, when there were new regulations made — I’ve heard it over and over again in my time — they were not made aware that there was a place to consult, or these changes have been made without them having any input and that somebody in the city decided this is how it is.

Will this be an ongoing consultation process where I can find out how to get them the information when I go knocking on their door? Then can I get back to you and give you a full report? I know how much rural and remote British Columbia gets forgotten when new regulations are made.

Hon. H. Bains: Thank you, Member. I understand. Different people in this province live differently. That’s what British Columbia is all about. They all have their role to play in developing and building our economy, and they all do a pretty good job. It is our responsibility to make sure we reach out to them.

I understand there are some challenges about Internet, and I think the Minister of Citizens’ Services is expanding that service. I heard many times how many different areas she has actually gone to, to announce a new service in different areas. But still, I agree. Cell phones…. Fax machines are no longer there anymore, so they can do it on line.

The consultation for the first two reports is done, because the two reports are delivered. They are going to start to work on the third report. I commit to you that if you believe there are ways to reach out to them, just let us know. We will help you reach out to them. Just contact my office, and we’ll find a way to reach out to those British Columbians who don’t have those facilities. Just come to my office or give us a phone call.

D. Barnett: Thank you, Minister. I appreciate it, and I will take you up on your offer.

I have one more question, not related to this, if I may. How is my physiotherapist issue? I had another letter yesterday from a client out in the Chilcotin who cannot receive any services under the Workers Compensation Act.

[4:15 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: Thank you for bringing this issue up earlier on — I think it was almost six months ago — and now again. It just so happened that last week I asked my staff to give me an update on this, because I wasn’t sure what was happening.

I was advised, and I think the information still is that about 420 clinics, representing about 95 percent, have signed on to that agreement. But there are about seven physiotherapy clinics in rural B.C. towns — and I think the member is talking about one of them — that refused to sign so far.

What is happening is WorkSafe B.C. is continuing to work with them. Also, I’m given the assurance that those workers who need physiotherapy and that treatment will get their treatment. Yes, there are maybe some different ways of doing it. Sometimes it may involve some travel, in the meantime, until this issue is resolved.

My expectation is that WorkSafe B.C. — well, they’ve assured me also — is working hard to make sure that we cover every area and all physiotherapy in all clinics as soon as possible. They are working at it, and hopefully, this issue will be resolved sooner than later.

D. Barnett: It has not been resolved. I will get you a copy of the letter that I received yesterday from a person out in remote British Columbia who cannot get the services he needs. The reason he cannot get the services he needs, as you know, is because of what WorkSafe B.C. is willing to pay the physiotherapist.

The physiotherapist will not do the job unless they can do it properly. You know that what has happened is a cutback on the time frame for them to do a job. That is why they’re refusing to do a job. There’s no sense doing a job half. It needs to be done completely, and that is the big issue.

Hon. H. Bains: Yeah, I agree that those workers who need physio treatment should get physio treatment. WorkSafe B.C, I am assured, has put proposals together, and they are working hard to have this issue resolved.

To me, it is a little frustrating that we don’t have this thing finalized yet, but it takes two sides, as you know. My understanding is that these clinics that have not signed on believe that their area of treatment is much more complex, so the injuries are much more complex. I think I’ll let those parties work at it, and hopefully, this issue will be resolved soon.

B. Stewart: First of all, I just want to thank the minister and his staff for improving what I think is an already good labour code. They’ve recently made some amendments to the labour code that we supported the other day.

I had the opportunity to participate and listen to some discussion about the labour code review that’s going on across the province. I welcome that type of review in the sense that I think it’s always good to make certain that good consultation is taking place.

[4:20 p.m.]

I guess I want to ask the minister about the background in terms of what is obviously a big change for the employers in terms of what added costs they’re going to be facing when it comes to doing business here in British Columbia, with the recent changes announced both in the budget and the previous announcement about minimum wage increases.

I’d like to ask the minister…. The question really…. It’s about the basis of the increase in cost to employers — what’s that arrived at and the justification for the increase.

Hon. H. Bains: As the member knows, when we were elected, we made commitments to British Columbians that we want to make life more affordable for British Columbians and improve services that people rely on and help to build an economy that all British Columbians can benefit from.

Minimum wage. We established the Fair Wages Commission. They went around and came back with recommendations, after consulting with all employers — small, large, medium-sized — workers representatives and workers. They came back with what, in my view, is a very, very good, commonsense proposal. The employer gets the predictability and certainty that they’ve always asked for.

This four-year increase in the Fair Wages Commission’s recommendation gives them exactly that predictability and certainty so that they have time to build in their budgets the labour costs. Now they know, for four years, what their costs are going to be.

As the member knows, it’s not wise to, as has happened in the past, freeze the minimum wage for ten years and then increase it by $2.25 in about 11 months. That’s what employers and businesses told me isn’t the right thing to do. They need gradual, predictable, commonsense increases. The Fair Wages Commission came back with those recommendations, after consulting with those employers.

We also have, in my mandate letter, to deal with upgrading our labour laws to reflect the changing economy and the changing world of workplaces. What was work 16 years ago or 18 years ago has changed. The workplaces have changed. The needs of the workers have changed. Employers’ needs have changed.

We are reviewing many of those areas and dealing with those areas to make sure that we are modernizing our labour laws, where both sides, the business side and the workers, can say confidently that these laws are the right laws for today, and they’re relevant for today’s economy.

I think that’s what we are doing. We’re going a step at a time, to get people to adjust, get the consultation and get input from all those who will be affected by these changes that we are bringing. I think that’s the approach. I believe it’s the right approach.

B. Stewart: Well, I don’t know what business experience the people on the Fair Wages Commission have had — their experience in terms of that.

[4:25 p.m.]

I’m glad that they heard from employers that a gradual increase in the cost of doing business in British Columbia is something that’s important.

I’m looking at the increase from September of 2017 to what’s projected in 2021: a rise of 40 percent in the minimum wage, which doesn’t necessarily include all the other cost pressures. I guess the question really is: does the Fair Wages Commission have people that have business experience and understand the predictability, both with the employees’ rising cost, as a cost of their goods and services they produce, and how they can pass that on to people that they are producing those goods for?

Many of them have entered into long-term contracts. I can cite personal examples in my own business that are with other jurisdictions in Canada, and you’re limited to how much you can actually expect to recover. This is well outside of what’s expected.

I guess what I’m really asking is: are you confident that there is enough business experience on the Fair Wages Commission and that their view on what business could support and sustain is reasonable in the sense that they actually have real business experience? That’s the question. Do the Fair Wages Commission members have business experience that you are confident that these people can give you the insight that employers are having to face today with these types of increases that are laid out and now in front of us?

Hon. H. Bains: The idea of establishing a Fair Wages Commission, if you look at it right from the beginning, was to depoliticize this whole process of politicians making decisions — how do we make decisions about minimum wages? — for the exact reason that the member has put forward.

If you look at the makeup of the Fair Wages Commission, Ken Peacock is an economist with the Business Council of B.C. He deals with businesses every day, their needs and their challenges, and what they need to survive. He’s deeply involved in that. Marjorie Griffin is also an economist and studied these reports on a daily basis, did her own research. Then you have Ivan Limpright, who deals with employers and workers to see what’s fair as far as listening to the employers and the needs of the workers and see what’s fair for them to agree on.

Again, I have this question from many who said: “Well, maybe there should be somebody from the agriculture industry. Maybe there should be somebody from the housing side or from the restaurant side. Maybe somebody from the small business side.”

You can’t have that many people on a commission to deal with that issue. But they did approach each and every sector of that economy. They talked to the agriculture farmers, and they talked to small businesses. Small businesses came and explained exactly what their challenges are. They listened to the workers and their representatives and did their own research. They hired experts, and they picked up data. Stats Canada sent a report — and other government data.

Looking at all of that…. They have the capacity. That’s another thing. They have the capacity to collect and absorb and then analyze all of that data and then come up with the recommendations. I wasn’t going to quarrel with them when they came back with the recommendations, because we want to depoliticize. It’s a hands-off approach. They did their work, they came back with a recommendation, and we accepted it.

[4:30 p.m.]

The people that I have heard from, Member — small businesses, medium-small businesses and others, are saying that right now their biggest challenge is that they cannot find workers. Different parts of the province have a bigger problem than others, but they all want certainty. They all want predictability as far as labour cost is concerned so that they can deal with their budgets going forward.

The Fair Wages Commission, with their expertise and their research, said that the economy can support these wages. They actually said that for the next two years, they expect the economy to continue to stand as it is today or even grow. In the following two years, again, they think the economy will not suffer negatively.

But they didn’t want to take that chance because, you know, economic predictions that far…. They didn’t want to take any risk. That’s why they gave higher increases in the first two years and lower increases in the last two years. They also suggested that if the economy continues to stay strong in the fourth year, they can recommend having an even higher wage increase at that time, 15 to 20 cents.

I’m really impressed by the research that they’ve done, all of the data they collected and how they delivered by analyzing all of the information they received. I think it’s the right approach and it’s the right thing to do.

B. Stewart: I guess I’m struck by the way that their opening letter to the minister sets out that the Fair Wages Commission has come up with a plan as to how to get to a wage of $15 an hour. I don’t dispute that. I don’t dispute the issues around affordability and the fact that the economy has been growing rapidly, and it’s put increased pressure, obviously, on the lowest members of British Columbians.

However, I still question the mandate. That’s the question — the mandate that you gave this commission. These economists and labour leaders, what was their mandate that you gave them when you asked them to come back? Was it to find a way to get to a minimum wage of $15 an hour and how quickly we could bring that in or how we could get to it? Is that what the mandate was?

Hon. H. Bains: The terms of reference are part of the report. The member probably has gone through it. Number 5 says: “The commission must prepare recommendations on the general minimum wage that will result in a series of increases over time to reach a $15/hour minimum wage.”

[L. Reid in the chair.]

It was up to them to decide how and then when, in what period, we’d reach $15. Through consultation, research and data collected, they came back with what the recommendations are. They actually came back with $15.20 by June 2021. They decided that with their research, with the data that they collected and through consultation and input that they received from businesses and others.

B. Stewart: Thank you for answering that. The mandate, really, was: how can we get to the notional $15 an hour? It’s been called all sorts of things. But anyways, I won’t bother repeating that.

[4:35 p.m.]

I guess that’s one side of the equation. I guess the other side of it is that besides this 40 percent cost increase over a four-year period…. We just had a minimum wage increase in September of 2017. We have a 40 percent rise in the cost of wages over the next little over four years. That’s 40 percent.

We also have the new employer health care tax, which many people that are in businesses…. I know that it’s been suggested that it’s only going to affect a small amount. I don’t have the statistical data, but I know many small business owners that have presented to me what the increased costs are going to be, and they’re going to be part of that increase.

On the opposite side of the equation, what’s the business expected to do to absorb these? What relief valve do they have, where they can’t raise the prices because of fixed-term contracts? What relief is going to be there? Is the economy…?

Everybody seems to be predicting that the economic growth is going to be as forecast or maybe better than forecast, and the fact is that small businesses will continue to survive. But I guess, really, what I’m kind of wondering is: what type of pressure relief is there for small businesses who have to shoulder this 40-plus percent increase? I can’t even imagine what that 2 percent additional employer health tax will add over and above that 40 percent.

Have you got any thoughts on how employers are supposed to compensate for that, other than just either laying off staff and reducing costs or raising prices where, in some cases, or many cases, they’re not allowed, under contractual arrangements, to lift those prices? I’m just looking for your direction, since you’ve authored this 40 percent increase.

Hon. H. Bains: So 85 percent of businesses will not pay health tax. Most of them — all of them — are small businesses. Many of them who paid MSP premiums before will not pay MSP premiums, so that is a saving for them. Small businesses also are given half a percent tax break, from 2½ percent to 2 percent. The third thing that the government did was remove PST on electricity used for industrial use. That is also a huge benefit to employers.

That is the one side. Only 5 percent of businesses will pay a health tax, as we have canvassed here in this House many, many times. The other between 85 and 95 percent will pay a smaller amount. I think it was kept in mind that those at the higher level who normally pay MSP premiums…. There’s a break for many of them. The others are asked to pay a little health tax so that the others can benefit from these breaks.

At the end of the day, when you look at…. We ran on that commitment to make life more affordable for British Columbians. It is not, I think, right to freeze minimum wage for ten years, as you know has happened in this province. Then, all of a sudden, you increase that by $2.25 over 11 or 12 months. That is something that the employer, businesses, despise. They don’t agree that that’s the way that government should be imposing.

Two things. It was an arbitrary decision, a government decision, a political decision. On the other hand, businesses got hurt by this. I think that when you look at what’s going on today, the economy is improving, but many people continue to struggle. They’re working harder and longer. Both members of the family have to work, but they are struggling to make ends meet. They’re struggling to put food on the table. They’re struggling to pay rent for their families. I think that people working full-time in British Columbia year-round shouldn’t be struggling to live in poverty.

[4:40 p.m.]

We are one of the richest provinces and richest countries in the world. I think we have a responsibility, on one hand, to create a business environment where businesses wish to come and want to come and invest, with the expectation that there will be a good return on their investment, but on the other hand, that we protect the workers who will be working with those businesses to create wealth, create services for all of us to enjoy. Those workers also need our support to make sure that they have health and safety protection, and their wages are paid so that they can live on wages.

I think that’s the underlying approach. Creating that balance is what this government is trying to do. That’s why the Fair Wages Commission came back with, I think, a very, very good approach at giving businesses predictable, commonsense and gradual increases so that they can adjust to the labour costs going forward — knowing full well that the economy will continue to grow, that those businesses will continue to grow.

The second point — and the last one I want to make on this, Member — is when you increase wages for the lowest-paid workers in this province, almost every penny that they receive in a raise increase they will invest in their own communities and in their own businesses. They don’t have the luxury to go spend in Hawaii and other places, so local businesses will benefit, and they will have a little better life to buy more, to have a little better means to help their children and have some more healthy food, perhaps.

I think it’s a fine balance that we are trying to create, and I think those lowest-paid workers deserve to get the increases. I firmly believe that a fair day’s work should get you a fair day’s wages.

B. Stewart: Well, these are all conjecture, I guess. If you have a business and you’ve already…. I just did the math. You mentioned the fact…. I mean, these are not the only increases that occurred.

The previous increase in September was part of a rise of $2.35 an hour since about 2011. I don’t have the exact numbers, but that’s a 27 percent increase over that period of time. If you amortize that out over that period, which is less than five years, that essentially equates to a reasonable amount — above the rate of inflation, but it’s something that businesses can absorb.

We have a four-year period now where it’s going to jump 40 percent, and I’m just suggesting that that is a staggering leap. I guess the question I’d have about two economists — or a member from the B.C. Business Council, who’s an economist, and another noted economist and labour leader — driving the process is that, what is business association saying…? I’m sure that you had many letters on this, and there would not have been universal support on the rise, to get to there by 2021.

I’m dismayed that the disconnect between what businesses can support…. I don’t disagree that we want to get there and we want to have reasonableness, but we need to have that.

When I look at the competitiveness of British Columbia, which is important in that report, was there a thorough analysis on the competitiveness of British Columbia businesses, being one of the first provinces or jurisdictions in Canada to raise minimum wage to this number that has been announced? I know that Ontario has adopted that, and it may be a little bit faster or more accelerated. I’m just wondering about the overall business competitiveness. Was that taken into consideration by the commissioners?

Hon. H. Bains: It wasn’t the minister’s decision or any of my colleagues’ decision. That’s why the Fair Wages Commission’s role was to consult with businesses. They learned from businesses their challenges. What can they afford? What is reasonable? They collected all of that data and came back with the recommendations.

[4:45 p.m.]

Member, they actually look also at the historical increases of minimum wages in British Columbia and other jurisdictions. That’s why we didn’t go the route that Alberta and Ontario did. There were some real challenges, and we wanted to make sure that we did reasonable, predictable increases. That was the role that the Fair Wages Commission played.

If you look at the historical increases, Member, going back to 1979…. Actually, it’s listed in the report. The increases are from as low as zero to 14.3 percent for a year. There were times…. There were about six years in the 1980s that there was no increase, and then there was about ten years, and in 2000, there was no increase. So obviously, there was time to catch up.

Well, we didn’t jump to the route that Ontario and Alberta did, so we also didn’t make decisions personally. That’s what the Fair Wages Commission role was — to collect the data, see what impact it may have on the businesses, especially small businesses. They consulted with them and came back and believe that these rates were sustainable and that those businesses will continue to grow and that that these workers who had been really left behind also will have a little catching up to do.

Even with the new wage increases, what they’re recommending…. They are from 4.1 percent to 11.5 percent, which is the first year. The last year will be 4.1 percent.

So yes, you can accumulate the total over four years or ten years or 20 years. Those numbers look pretty big. But the end result is that we still…. When we formed government, we were the seventh worst in minimum wage, from the second highest. So I think these workers were left behind for a number of years, and they were struggling. When you couple that with the affordability issue…. I’m sure the member knows in his own area that that is a serious issue. On the Lower Mainland, it’s a serious issue.

I think it’s about being fair so that all members of our society benefit from our growing economy. That wasn’t the case, and the people at the lower end felt that they were being left behind. I think the evidence is very clear that they were.

The Fair Wages Commission not only looked at how you help them but, at the same time, not to hurt the businesses by recommending something that would hurt them. I think I respect their work. I respect the work that they did, respect all of the information — a thorough report, actually. They considered everything that they heard from people, when they came back with these recommendations. I’m really impressed with the work that they’ve done.

B. Stewart: Well, you mentioned 1979. I started work a long time ago, before 1979, but I do remember working in 1975 and being told by my employer that there were wage and price controls. The fact is that wages were frozen and limited to only a 10 percent increase per annum. Of course, I didn’t make very much then, so I guess 10 percent didn’t mean very much.

Anyways, I persevered. Even with wage and price controls or whatever, I persevered and bought my first house in 1976 with a very low down payment.

However, I look at what happened in the ’80s. Now, we had that inflationary period, and my concern is that what this is going to do is it’s going to trigger issues around pressures on business. It’s inflationary in their costs. It doesn’t mean that inflation is going up that much, but it’s simple economics.

The fact is that if you’re going to see a rise of not only the 27 percent that we brought in but the 40 percent that you’re bringing in over the next four years, plus the employer health tax, even if it’s only that 15 percent of businesses, whatever…. I can tell you that in my own business it’s $150,000 additional cost in 2019 for us. I know that your companies that are in the business of mining, forestry, etc…. I’ve talked to many of those types of employers. They know that it’s going to cost more, and they are getting that relief in the sense they won’t have to be doing that, but the offset is an increase in costs.

[4:50 p.m.]

I go back to 1979 and what inflation was doing, where interest rates were at. In 1979, I worked for Citibank, and our interest rates for first mortgage money was 10¼ percent. By the time 1982 rolled around, first mortgage money was just under 20 percent. It was a time…. Businesses were failing left, right and centre.

The question that I don’t think the commission has failed to realize…. Number one, not one of them is a business operator. They’re economists. They’re labour leaders. They don’t know anything about…. They know how to analyze things. If the economists had had everything right back in the ’80s, we wouldn’t have had the trouble that we had when former Premier Bennett was sitting in this House dealing with people saying that the wages weren’t going up fast enough. We know all the history on that.

I guess I don’t want to dwell on the history and this type of thing, but I don’t see enough relief in this. I think it’s important that it be balanced. I don’t see any kind of ability for the government bringing this in, in terms of employers that are having to maybe declare bankruptcy, go into receivership — those types of things. They will happen. The fact is that the economy is not linear just because it’s been growing at a compound rate of 1½ to 2½ percent. There will be failures, etc.

I think that is where this particular cost is unfairly being passed on to employers, without that relief or the fact that we’ve already laid out the next five years. That gives the certainty that you said they wanted to know, which is correct. However, I’m not certain that that’s recoverable.

To me, I guess the last part of…. As the minister, you’re helping raise the cost of what British Columbia goods and services are going to cost around the globe. I mean, for the people that are in those businesses that depend on it…. Some of that will be in farm work. It could be in other types of retail, etc. Those people are going to be impacted.

What can you offer them that will allow them some certainty? If things don’t go the way that you hope or that you anticipate — the compound rate of growth — what are you going to do? What is your option or willingness to help out? Are you going to listen to them? The same as you’ve said that everybody feels that the wages and the affordability…. It’s your priority, so what are we going to do with businesses when it becomes unaffordable to them? Have you got any options?

Hon. H. Bains: Thank you to the member for his thoughts. I have a lot of respect for the member and his thoughts.

Businesses, as you know — the member is a businessman — have many challenges, many costs. Some are in their control; some are not. You know that. Some costs are increased whether they like it or not. Labour is only one cost, and there are many other costs that they have to deal with on a daily basis. Those are the challenges.

Like I said, we have taken steps. Small businesses — the income tax is lowered. That’s one thing we did, and also removing PST on industrial use of electricity. So 50 percent gone now, and it will be completely gone January 2019. That will be a huge help in defraying some of the costs that they’re incurring through the increase of wages.

[4:55 p.m.]

I, again, ask the member that…. Economists are economists. Business people do their best to keep their businesses running and growing and to keep their workers employed.

Also remember that a low-wage economy isn’t a good economy either. A low-wage economy, as you know, will not support the businesses that they are supporting today. They may have a glass of beer, but they will not be able to buy a bottle of your wine. I’m not being funny here. That’s the reality.

I think the more money people have in their pockets, the more they invest in the economy, and the economy will grow. You want to make sure that we have a high-wage economy rather than a low-wage economy, a full-time wage economy rather than a part-time economy. No one benefits from that.

Again, economists…. We train them, and they guide us. They guide governments. They guide businesses — how to predict their future, how to run their businesses. How do you deal with your business plan?

Fifty economists from all across Canada last year wrote a letter saying that the low-wage economy is not only bad for workers but is bad for businesses as well. They have done their research through data collection, talking to businesses and looking at the historical effects of a low-wage economy.

I think this Fair Wages Commission did a really good job to help us make sure that we have reasonable, predictable increases. They build this into the businesses. Many businesses I talked to knew that the minimum wage is going to go up, and they knew our campaign commitment was to raise minimum wage to $15 by 2021. So they knew that.

I met with them after I was appointed as a minister. I met with something like 25 different businesses in that period of time, and — you know what? — not too many of them said minimum wage should not go up. They said the minimum wage is going to go up. They expect the minimum wage to go up, but they wanted certainty, and they wanted predictability. That’s what the Fair Wages Commission delivered.

I was talking to business people. Those are the people that told me that the minimum wage is going to go up, but they want certainty. They want predictability. They want gradual rather than what they saw was happening in Ontario and Alberta, so we didn’t go the route of Alberta and Ontario. I think how it is received out there…. I’m really satisfied that it is well received since the report was delivered out there.

Member, I think we can go back and forth on this for a long time, but the fact is that we want to make sure that we have a balanced approach. On one hand, we are helping businesses. I mentioned those breaks that we have given them. On the other hand, the workers are also given increases so that they can stay not only with inflation but give them a little bit extra so they can invest that money into the businesses — the very businesses that we are talking about — so those businesses will continue to survive and thrive in those communities where those workers live.

C. Oakes: I thank you for the opportunity to ask questions. Specifically, I’ll carry on, perhaps, in the conversation about minimum wage.

Minimum wage, of course, has long been a subject of considerable attention and debate. The controversy surrounding minimum wage often arises from the tension between well-intentioned efforts to increase incomes for low-income workers and the significant negative economic impacts with increasing minimum wages.

The controversy is also fuelled by a general misunderstanding of what kind of workers actually earn minimum wage. So what is the percentage of individuals in British Columbia currently making minimum wage?

[5:00 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: What the Fair Wages Commission reported — I think it’s listed in here: about 5 percent, a little under 5 percent, are the minimum-wage earners, 4.8 percent, to be exact; a total of about 94,000 workers, with a workforce of about 1.9 million in B.C.

C. Oakes: To the minister: could you identify what percentage of individuals earning minimum wage are youth between the ages of 15 and 24?

Hon. H. Bains: Member, I think all that information…. I could go through each one of them if you wish, but it is listed in the Fair Wages Commission report. Those 15 to 24 years represent 15.7 percent, and they represent about 54 percent of those who are minimum-wage earners — or number-wise, 50,600 total.

C. Oakes: I’m just trying to draw on a comment that the minister made earlier, about how incredibly important it all is for us to be supporting young people to get into the workforce. That is a goal that we all want to achieve in British Columbia. This is where the line of questioning is coming from. How do we make sure that the policies that government is putting forward are actually going to have the effects to support those younger workers and low-skilled workers? That is the intent of the work that the Fair Wages Commission identified.

I could probably list off, and maybe I will list off…. I’ve got about seven pages of economists that have identified significant concerns on the impact that an increase in minimum wage has, specifically on the young workforce between the ages of 15 and 24. Some of these studies, in fact, highlight that a 10 percent increase in minimum wage will likely decrease employment, among those who typically earn minimum wage, by 3 to 6 percent. But research shows that other negative effects of the highest minimum wage, including fewer benefits and less training for workers, are actually to young workers.

I know that the Fair Wages Commission, the economists, surely would have provided this analysis to the minister because, of course, these studies run across Canada. The employment effect for teens and youth workers of a 10 percent increase would decrease employment by 3 percent to 6 percent.

So while the work that is being brought forward by the Fair Wages Commission is well intentioned, if you look at research arising from very well-established economists from across Canada, it suggests that the well-intentioned efforts to increase the income of lower-income workers actually have significant negative economic costs associated.

How does the minister suppose to mitigate effects on young workers to ensure that training still happens for young workers? We want to make sure, of course, that safety is always paramount. I know that the minister has mentioned that in the past. Critically important are training, investment in young people as they enter into the workforce and, finally, making sure that the number of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 — 50,600 — have every opportunity to enter into the workforce.

[5:05 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: Thank you for the question. I think we share the concerns in the member’s questioning. For young workers, this is probably their first job, and they want to have a good experience. I think, if you look at what’s been happening in British Columbia for a number of years now, we know that, going forward, all the economists’ and all government’s data and reports show that over 82 percent of future jobs will require some kind of a university degree, diploma or training.

Currently, those students are leaving undergraduate degrees with over $34,000 in debt. There’s a serious challenge that we as a society face. There’s a disincentive for those workers to get their post-secondary education right now — because, No. 1, the highest debt in the country, and No. 2, they’ll struggle to get a job, to begin with, that pays high enough wages to pay their debts, never mind starting their life.

I think, when you look at the Fair Wages Commission, they delved into all this stuff. The member knows. She read their report. If you look at page 25, this is what Mr. Green, the University of B.C. professor that the Fair Wages Commission hired, had to say:

“In Canada, the effect of minimum wage increases on young adults, 20 to 24, and other minimum-wage workers is basically zero. According to Green, the effect of a 10 percent increase in minimum wage could possibly result in an employment effect of between 0.1 percent and 0.3 percent.”

Then they went on to say:

“This negative effect, although slight, is further tempered by another finding, which is that although it takes longer for young adults to find work, the results are improved labour market experiences, in that layoff rates tend to be reduced. This means a higher minimum wage leads to more stable jobs.”

C. Oakes: I have a significant list, again, of economists. There’s a significant amount of data, I will admit, that has certainly come out of the United States on the effects of minimum wage. But we’re certainly seeing more research that is being done — specifically in Ontario. There are a lot of Ontario economists that have come forward with the significant effects on young people. As well, the Fraser Institute has come forward with the economic effects of increasing B.C.’s minimum wage.

All of this research points to the fact that an increase in minimum wage will, in effect, negatively affect young people entering into the workforce. Again, I guess maybe more specifically, what specific things will the ministry do to help mitigate the effects on young people who are looking at entering into the workforce?

Hon. H. Bains: I think there are different ministries involved in post-secondary education, ministries involved in providing better training, better opportunities for our youth through apprenticeship training. I think we are also working with the labour movement and other employers to make sure that we have more apprentices when we are investing taxpayers’ dollars in infrastructure improvements.

[5:10 p.m.]

I think there’s one concrete step that we’re going to take to make sure that people have the opportunity to get the training that they need. There are a number of other issues that I think we can engage with the other ministries on through the estimates, but I just want to draw the member’s attention to how much relevancy there is between an increase in minimum wage and jobs and employment.

They have provided us the data going back to 1979. Let me just read to the member. In 1981, there was zero minimum wage increase, and the unemployment rate was 6.8 percent. In 1983, zero minimum wage increase, but the unemployment rate went to 12.1 percent. Then, in the following year, it went to 13.9 percent, no minimum wage increase.

Then, if you look at the other side of it…. The member was part of the government when the minimum wage was frozen, if I’m not mistaken, if the member was there at that time. If I look at the effect of the minimum wage, the minimum wage was zero. Then you go to increase…. At that time, in 2010, the minimum wage wasn’t increased at all. It was a zero increase, and the unemployment rate was 7.6 percent.

Then, within 11 months, the minimum wage went up $2.25, and the unemployment rate went down to 6.8 percent, then 6.6 percent, then 6.1 percent. So I think for every report that you see on minimum wage and its effect on unemployment that says there’s a negative effect on employment and on jobs, there’s an equal number of reports from economists, renowned economists in the world, that will give you the opposite report — that there’s no relevancy between a minimum wage increase and jobs and employment.

I think it is something that I don’t want to delve too much into because I’m not an economist. They do their work. But the Fair Wages Commission is the one that did all this work, consulting economists, consulting businesses. That’s why I did not make those decisions initially. I gave them the opportunity to do the work that is the right thing to do — to consult, research and come back with the recommendations.

So they delved into all of the issues that the member is canvassing here and considered all of that and came back with the recommendations. They think it’s the right approach. It is something that businesses wanted — to give them predictable, gradual increases and give them certainty so that they can adjust their budgets going forward. I think that is the right thing to do.

If I had made those decisions sitting in my office, “Tomorrow I should give them this much and next year this much,” you would have very legitimate concerns. But these are the issues that the Fair Wages Commission — they’re very qualified people — came back with. They considered Ontario, they considered Alberta, they considered other jurisdictions, and they also considered the historical increases and the effect on unemployment and came back with the report.

I accepted that because I believe that is the right thing to do. I didn’t want to politicize that process and allowed the experts to guide us, and that’s what I did.

C. Oakes: I’d like to thank the minister for his response. I’m just trying to understand this process so I can articulate that out to our small businesses and make sure that they’re comfortable with the next steps. To be clear, when you received your briefing from the Fair Wages Commission and the analysis that they provided, there was no concern from the Fair Wages Commission to you, the minister, about the negative effects on low-skilled workers and young people between the ages of 15 and 24? That was not raised to the minister?

Hon. H. Bains: I gave them 90 days to consult and do their research and collect data, and I think they articulated their arguments in that report very well. They looked at negatives, positives and what possible impact it might have in different….

[5:15 p.m.]

They listed who it is that is employed at minimum wage and what percentage and how it will affect them. As I said, when they didn’t have the capacity or time, they hired other consultants. So Mr. Green came in. His research, as I read to the member before: the effect of the minimum wage increase on young adults — he mentioned 20 to 24 — and other minimum wage workers is basically zero.

That is part of their report. And they took the recommendations from that expert and, considering all of the information that they had — what effect it has on different age groups, different sectors — came back with a recommendation that that is the right approach. It’s what they’re recommending to me, considering everything.

Yes, there are concerns here and concerns there, but the final report suggests that those are the rates that they believe the economy can sustain — that they will not have any negative impact on, I think, any age group or any sector. They believe that is the right thing to do. So I accepted that.

C. Oakes: I hope that the economists, what they brought forward…. It is my hope that they are accurate, because the information that I have suggests something different, and that would certainly be difficult for the province of British Columbia.

Has the government conducted an economic analysis of increasing minimum wage, and would they be willing to release that?

Hon. H. Bains: No, as government, we have not done economic analysis on the minimum wage, but that’s why the Fair Wages Commission was hired. They did their own research. They hired experts who have done minimum wage…. I don’t know whether you call them economic analyses. But they looked at the history behind minimum wage increases in different jurisdictions and their impact on those jurisdictions and different ways that many jurisdictions brought in the minimum wage. They came back and felt that this is the right approach: to have predictable and gradual increases over a four-year period.

I think the report is very, very thorough. They spoke about, in the report, the relationship of a strong economy and the increase of minimum wage. They believe when the economy is strong, the economy and the businesses can sustain a little higher minimum wage increase. And they believe that the economy will continue to grow in the next two years. That’s why they front-load the minimum wage. That’s their reason, because now the economy can sustain those little higher minimum wage increases the first year and the second year.

They believe that again in the last two years, the economy will not slow down, but they didn’t want to take a risk. I think that is the assurance to the businesses — that you cannot predict a four-year economic cycle in this economy. Therefore, there’s a lower — it’s 4 percent, 5 percent — increase in the last two years. But they also said that if the economy continues to stay strong, they could recommend at that time maybe another 15- or 20-cent increase in the last year.

I think, on balance, they came back with a very, very thorough report, conducting very thorough research, collecting data and then recommending to me and this government to make sure that businesses will not be impacted negatively and the workers will get the extra money in their pocket, which they will be investing in their own businesses in their own communities, which the businesses will benefit from.

[5:20 p.m.]

C. Oakes: I understand that the minister has taken the commission’s analysis that they have done and brought this forward. But surely…. Maybe I’ll turn more, now, to the 40 percent increase that we will see in the rise of wages over the next four years. Surely some economic analysis has been done by government to understand the full impact a 40 percent increase will have on the labour market. Could the minister perhaps provide us with what that analysis has told him?

Hon. H. Bains: Again, I’m going to refer back to the Fair Wages Commission. If I was to make that decision in the absence of the Fair Wages Commission, I probably would have done some economic analysis. I left that to the Fair Wages Commission to do their own research and deal with the economic analysis that they have their hands on.

If you look at what the report says, the Fair Wages Commission is guided by the information we have that deals with both the impact of minimum-wage increases on employment and the state of the B.C. economy.

Recent evidence seems to show that B.C. has moved away from the boom-bust cycle that characterized its earlier economic structure, one that was highly reliant on the export of resources. The economy can now be characterized as one that is increasingly diversified in both export and domestic markets. It also has performed strongly in recent years with sustained overall growth, strong job growth and low unemployment rate. B.C. currently has the lowest unemployment rate in Canada. These positive economic indicators also encourage a high rate of immigration and an inflow of capital.

Then, again, they went on to say: “In coming to our decisions, we have taken into account both the problems for workers who work at poverty wages and the problems for employers if wage increases occur too rapidly. As we heard repeatedly in our consultations with both workers, employers, and people in the community, no person should work full-time and live in poverty.” Over and over, they heard that.

There were two economists on that panel. They hired other economists, and they looked at all of the economic analysis that was available to them, to guide me on how we arrive at these rates. That’s why it’s not them suggesting to freeze the minimum wage for five years and then increase it by 14 percent in one year. I think that’s not the route to go, and we didn’t go there. That’s why I left it up to the Fair Wages Commission to do that work and guide me, considering all of the economic data and analysis that is available to them.

[5:25 p.m.]

They are experts in their own field. One of them deals with employers every day, businesses every day. He’s a chief economist with the B.C. Business Council. So this was a unanimous report — you know, not that one of them decided that he or she did not agree with it and has some concern. Unanimously, they agreed that this is the right approach and this is the way to go. They have looked at all of the economic data that is available to them. And they took their time and recommended to us….

If you look at it so far, as far as the reception of this report, I think there’s been a pretty good feeling that I have, and I think employers will feel that we’ve done the right thing.

C. Oakes: Thank you for that, but perhaps I wasn’t clear enough and should articulate a little better. When the minister made the announcement about the Fair Wages Commission…. I don’t want to put…. And I don’t have the quote. I’m sorry. I’m going off memory.

The minister talked about how they would be mitigating the effects of small business. With all due respect…. I have absolute respect for the economists that were part of the Fair Wages Commission, but the gap that I saw, as an individual having worked my entire professional career with small businesses, is that you did not have a representative on that panel that specifically represented small business.

As members in this House have raised, you have an increase in minimum wage, you have a new employer health tax, and you have a carbon tax. So there’s been a significant increase to the economic costs on small business, which will have an effect on the labour markets.

To the minister: you are the defender of labour in the province of British Columbia, making sure that the economy is strong and that our numbers stay strong. What analysis have you or your ministry done to look at what the analysis will be on the effects on small business — of the cumulative effect of all of the tax increases and increase in minimum wage?

Hon. H. Bains: I think all you have to do is look at the results. Last month, in March, B.C. had the lowest unemployment rate in the country. February, same thing. January, same thing. And the prediction is that this economy will continue. It may slow down a little bit, but not because of the minimum-wage increase, not because of some of the policies of the government.

There are many other factors, as the member knows. We have challenges with the United States — the softwood lumber dispute. There are other protectionist approaches being taken by other countries. So I think there are bigger challenges out there than the worry about the minimum-wage increase.

I think we have mentioned here some of the breaks that businesses have received. I mean, small businesses received — their taxes have gone down from 2½ percent to 2 percent — some help. The electricity rates for industrial use — there’s a 50 percent cut this year, and it will be eliminated, going forward, in January 2019. Many paid MSP premiums for their employees. They will no longer be paying that. They will be keeping that money.

We’re working, on the one hand, with businesses to make sure they get the break that they need. On the other hand, those at the higher end we are asking to pay a little bit extra so that all of those people who are middle-class, small businesses, get the break that they deserve. That’s why we eliminated the tax break to the top 2 percent — so that we can use that money to help, again, the small businesses and the middle class and the working people. So it is an approach. We ran on that commitment, and we are delivering on it.

C. Oakes: Since 1987, I believe — and I could be incorrect — there’s been a partnership that the province of British Columbia has had with the federal government around statistical gathering and analysis, specifically as it pertains to the small business sector. The Small Business Profile was released, I believe, the first Wednesday of March.

[5:30 p.m.]

I noted that the statistics that were used in the Small Business Profile report were the statistics from the previous year for 2016. Is the ministry still looking at analytical data for small business still in that partnership with the federal government and gaining statistics around small business that you are utilizing to make your decisions?

Hon. H. Bains: I think the member, perhaps, is talking about how small business is the responsibility of the Minister of Jobs. My mandate is to deal with the employment laws. My mandate is to deal with the Workers Compensation Board and the act, temporary foreign workers. Those are the areas that I am dealing with.

Minimum wage becomes part of the Employment Standards Act, which is my jurisdiction. So we’re moving on that, and I think we’ve done the due diligence. It wasn’t a political decision. It was a decision where we were guided by experts. They collected all of the information, and that’s why the report is there and we accepted that.

C. Oakes: Where I was trying to…. I was hoping that this question would help answer a question that I’d heard repeatedly in the House. In fact, the minister himself used it as an answer to a question from one of my colleagues. It is that 85 percent of businesses will not pay the employer health tax.

I certainly have all of the analysis and reports from the Small Business Profile that talk about the microbusinesses. They literally, line by line, through the Small Business Profile, with this partnership that we have, articulate and tell us the story of what our small business profile is in British Columbia.

To the minister: would you be willing to table the information that you have utilized to suggest that 85 percent of businesses will not pay the employer health tax?

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Hon. H. Bains: That is under the Ministry of Finance, as you know, and the Minister of Finance, in this House, answering questions from the opposition, has made those statements. I think she’s using the data that all of those businesses with a payroll up to $1.5 million will not pay. From there, she came to the 85 percent.

I think those estimates are still coming. If you want to pursue that area further, my suggestion is that you speak to that minister at that time.

C. Oakes: I thank you for the advice, and I will certainly raise that with the minister. I look forward to that report getting tabled in the House so that we can answer those questions that small businesses are raising on how the government came up with that number.

I’m moving a little bit now to…. I have a question around WorkSafe. Then I have a constituent question, and then I will be done my questions that I have for the minister. I thank him for this opportunity.

WorkSafe B.C. has seen some of the lowest worker injury rates in recent years, something we can all support. But it has also seen unprecedented surpluses now sitting at $5 billion. In Alberta, Saskatchewan and Prince Edward Island, they have refunded the overage to employers, as that is where they are receiving their funding. Is the government looking at following other jurisdictions on this matter?

[5:35 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: When I was appointed the minister, I was told there is a surplus. I think the previous government, if I’m not mistaken, made the announcement that they wish to return that to the employer. So I’m advised that WorkSafe gave a ten-cent, I believe, break on their premiums going forward.

C. Oakes: Now, I will turn a little bit to a localized issue that we are faced with, and the minister is well acquainted with — the forest economy and some of the challenges that we have.

Specifically, one of the challenges we have right now is there have been some changes to our truck drivers on the chains that are required for load changes. There is some discrepancy between what is being required through WorkSafe B.C. versus an agreement that was made unilaterally with the United States and Canada. That’s not my question, so, people, please don’t panic.

But one of the challenges of making changes like this, where we are requiring more chains on loads in the forest sector, is we’ve seen a significant increase in the challenges around physiotherapy. The number one issue that we have for workers in forest-related economies is the shoulder. It’s certainly an issue, and I’ve got lots of WorkSafe files in my office of individuals trying to go and get physiotherapy so that they can get back out and get to work and make sure that we’re producing a really strong, vibrant forest economy in British Columbia.

The challenge that we have currently in the Cariboo is our physiotherapists are still without coverage for rehabilitative services. That’s a significant challenge for a forest-based economy like ours.

I believe the member for Cariboo-Chilcotin has raised that in the House, but just again, I receive multiple letters weekly in my office around concerned constituents asking me as their representative to ask the minister what we are going to do to make sure that our rural physiotherapists are supported for the incredible, valuable work that they provide to make sure work happens on the ground in our resource-based communities.

[5:40 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: Yes, the member from Cariboo canvassed this question, not only today, but in the last few months as well. We’ve been working with her very, very closely.

I’m concerned that some of those clinics in some of those cities and towns haven’t been able to negotiate a deal with the physiotherapists. You’re looking at about 5 percent in the entire province, but 5 percent is 5 percent. If you don’t have a physiotherapist, you don’t have a physiotherapist. These workers who wish to go back to work…. When they need the service, they should get that service. That’s my commitment.

I’m advised, because I’ve been on this case for the last little while as well…. First, they advised me that they were able to negotiate a deal with 95 percent of all physiotherapists.

I was inquiring the last few weeks, and now I’m advised that within the last two, three days, they have sent another proposal to those who have not signed a deal yet. Hopefully they will work hard at it, and there’s a deal. Then those workers who need that service will get the service in a timely fashion.

It is not right for a worker to sit at home, who wishes to go to work, but they can’t do that because they don’t have the health care service that they need — not good for the worker, not good for the employer either. I think they’re working hard, and I’m satisfied that the deal will be cut, and we will have this issue resolved.

I ask the member to keep me apprised. I will be asking WorkSafe myself. If you hear — any member here — that that deal is still not there, please let us know.

J. Martin: Thank you to the minister for fielding inquiries from a number of my colleagues.

Shortly after the first report came out, I was invited to one of my local Rotary clubs to come and speak about the minimum wage. Rotary, as we all know, is supposed to be a strictly non-partisan forum, so I kind of did my best to keep my biases to myself and be very careful with the language I used — much different than my conduct in this House.

One of the things that I tried to stress — not so much on behalf of the government, but just trying to explain the rationale of the government…. They made a reference to the fact that people working at a full-time job earning minimum wage cannot cut it in parts of the province and that they have to take a second job, often at minimum wage — either half-time or sometimes even approaching the equivalent of full-time — to make ends meet.

It didn’t go over very well, because most of the people in that room said: “Well, I work 70 hours a week, and this minimum wage means that my labour costs, in some cases, are going to go up, and I may have to work 70, 75 hours a week.”

I saw that there was a distinct lack of empathy for the notion that somebody has to work more than 40 hours a week. I don’t think there’s too many people in this place that have seen a 40-hour week in the last years, and in some cases, decades.

To what extent is that a valid commentary about the current state of affairs with respect to low-income wage earners?

[5:45 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: Member, thank you. That’s exactly what I hear. I have met with many, many groups, individual workers. It is not uncommon that you hear that they’re working two jobs — both husband and wife having to work to make ends meet. They’re struggling to put food on the table. They’re struggling to pay rent, if they can find a place to rent. There are many challenges.

Our economy continued to grow in the last few years, but certain segments of our society were left behind. They did not enjoy the benefits of a growing economy. We are taking small steps to help that situation.

On one hand, we are lowering their financial burden, as you know, through some of the initiatives that government has taken. On the other hand, we are raising their income level. We increased payments to those on disability and income assistance, for example. Minimum wage has increased in a gradual, predictable manner so that small businesses don’t get hurt but workers get the extra money in their pockets to get the basics that they need to run their lives and support their children.

I think this phenomenon is a reality. We’re trying to help. That’s why by going this route, by lowering their financial burden and increasing their incomes, the Fair Wages Commission work may be — because there are a number of other initiatives that the government needs to take, and we need to work with our partners as well — that the gap between minimum wage and living wage is narrowed.

I think we have made some gains in that area, but I don’t have the numbers to say that that’s exactly what we’ve done. But that’s the attempt that we are trying to do. I agree. That’s what I hear out there. They’re working longer and harder so that they can make their ends meet.

J. Martin: One of the outcomes of the Fair Wages Commission is that 100 percent of the noble and righteous formula to increase the income of low-wage earners — 100 percent of it — falls on employers.

Why didn’t the ministry or the commission give thought to assisting low-wage earners by shifting the threshold at which people pay any taxes or examining tax credits that would specifically apply to people in that income range? Why was it so necessary that 100 percent of the burden fall on employers?

Hon. H. Bains: As I mentioned earlier, the government has taken some initiatives to help British Columbians in many different ways — eliminating MSP premiums; eliminating tolls for those who live in that area; at the same time, establishing universal child care in British Columbia — in order to help those who are at the low end of the financial rung.

They can leave their children at an affordable child care place, and they can both go to work. Today they can’t do that. If they have children, first, they can’t even find child care spaces, and if they do, it’s too expensive. They can’t afford it, so one of them has to stay home. It is a financial burden on them. By going the route that we are going, making child care affordable, they have that luxury, now, to leave their children at a professional place. They know that they don’t have to worry about it now, because the children are taken care of, and they can go to work.

Increasing the minimum wage and also lowering their other costs — that’s how we are helping all British Columbians to make their lives more affordable.

[5:50 p.m.]

We are a young government, as you know. We have taken all those initiatives, and I think people feel that we are working for people. We made the commitment that we want to put people in the centre in developing our economic and social policies, so that’s what we’re doing here.

J. Martin: At that same Rotary meeting I referred to moments ago, one gentleman stood up. He’s a partner in a local auto dealership. He said: “I employ three young boys, pay them minimum wage. They work 35 hours a week washing cars. Since I heard this news, I’m looking at investing in a robotic automatic car washer.”

To what extent did the minister and the commission take into account the amount of businesses that may look at partial automation and robotics as a consequence of a significant increase to their labour costs spread over a short number of years?

Hon. H. Bains: Member, as you know, I’ve been in the workplace…. I started working in 1972. I can tell you, whether they were a low-wage industry or high-wage industry, automation came and did their jobs. It is reality. Automation, tech change, is what all businesses look at. Of course, they look at how to be competitive, and wage costs are just one part of their costs. There are a number of…. I mean, efficiency. If the machine can do it faster, they will go with the machine.

I can tell you, with my own experience, when I started in the sawmill in 1973, we had 650 employees in there. I believe our production was, if I remember my numbers, about 180,000 a shift total production. Then we went through a major, major tech change. The bin sorts were brought in to replace the chain pullers, the result being, I think, the membership in our mill was down to about 250 from 650, so close to one-third, but the production went up to 480 and 500 a shift.

I think, yes, they save money on the labour cost, but the efficiency that the high tech and the new technology brings in, is another real factor when businesses decide to go to a tech change.

J. Martin: I probably wasn’t as specific as I wanted to be on that. The point was…. And I don’t think it will take much of the minister’s time to respond to it. My point is that he’s looking at making this change, and that would result in three young gentlemen that would lose their full-time, entry-level job into the marketplace. Would you care to comment on that, at that point?

Hon. H. Bains: Member, I apologize. I cannot comment on individual situations. But I mean, if that is part of the example you use — how these decisions will affect workplaces which rather than pay a higher minimum wage, they automate….

[5:55 p.m.]

I think I said in my earlier comment that employers make decisions for a variety of reasons — to change their workplaces, bring new technology. If that employer decided that the minimum wage was going up by, I think, $1.30 in June this year…. So the person that you were talking to hasn’t seen the minimum wage go up yet. What he’s talking about is the 50 cent increase that was instituted in September last year.

So 50 cents represents about $1,000-per-person increase, so three people, $3,000. If he employed…. If that made economic sense for him, he made that decision. It’s his decision.

All employers make those decisions based on doing their calculations and how it will affect their bottom line, because businesses work to survive, and they look at their bottom line. How can they save more money? The only way to do that is lower their costs or increase their production. I mean, they could do both. But many employers will see where the opportunity is and make decisions accordingly. Those are their personal decisions.

J. Martin: I thought that was a very good response. I appreciate it.

We’ve got a labour review underway in this province, and within the terms of reference, it says that the minister will make the panel report public after a reasonable period of time to review and consider it, and this will also be provided — a report to cabinet.

First question in this area, if I may: at what point will the public expect to see the results of this report?

Hon. H. Bains: The member may know that the review panel for the labour code went through consultation and collected information. I think they actually did a wider consultation than the Fair Wages Commission did, in my understanding. They went into more communities. They took submissions by individuals, unions, employers, academics and lawyers, labour law practitioners.

Their report is due to me by August 1. Once that report comes to me…. Sometimes they ask for more time. They may. I don’t know. But the Fair Wages Commission asked for a little extra time. I wanted that report by the end of the year, but they didn’t deliver until the middle of January.

We’ll see how it goes. I think my expectation is that they will do their work by August 1 and have a report on my desk. I will take some time to consider it. Then we will consult with the cabinet, and then we’ll make it public.

J. Martin: Will there be a period of consultation with stakeholders after the report is released and we know what some of the recommendations and main pieces of it are going to consist of? If there is going to be a consultation among stakeholders, what would that look like?

[6:00 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: I will wait for the report and see what they recommend because they may have some ideas. But I think if you look at the Fair Wages Commission report, when the report came, I considered it and talked to my colleagues. It went through the cabinet, and then we made it public, and we accepted it.

This one here, I’m not so sure exactly how it will play out. I will wait for the report to come. All of the people who will be affected by it have their opportunity to consult and give their input to this panel. I think that is consultation, in my view. But if they recommend that more consultation is needed, then I think I will make the decision at that time.

J. Martin: Realistically, in what session of the Legislature sitting would we be expected to potentially see legislation coming forward from the report?

Hon. H. Bains: It depends on the report, also the complexity of the report and how many recommendations there are — if they’re recommending wholesale changes to the labour code or tweaking certain areas. It all depends. Based on that, we will develop what it will take to develop an RFL, which means the legislation, and then we’ll look at the legislative calendar and see where we fit in.

My mandate letter requires me to make those changes. Whatever recommendations come, I will consider them seriously and then work towards bringing in the legislation as quickly as I can.

J. Martin: We know that next door in Alberta, where employer code changes were implemented, there’s been considerable commentary that they were maybe implemented quite hastily, and in several cases, the government had to walk some of it back. In other instances, it created an awful lot of problems for the workplace.

Can the minister commit that if there are going to be changes in this area, they’re going to be done in a timely manner that takes into consideration the needs of the workplace and the stakeholders and that we’re not going to have a situation similar to what we saw next door, where things were obviously rushed?

Hon. H. Bains: I think part of their terms of reference is, clearly, to make sure that they review and analyze different issues and that the panel also consider relevant developments in other Canadian jurisdictions. They will be looking at what happened in other jurisdictions and how the changes were implemented. So I will wait to see that report and see how we can go about it. At the end of the day, I want to make sure that the businesses are comfortable with it and the unionized workforce also feels that they’ve got the fair changes that they’ve been pushing for.

In Alberta, also, as you know, there was one government for 43 years, I believe. The new government came in, and there were expectations for them to make changes quickly. They did what they did. But I think we have a situation here…. The labour code’s last change was made in 2003, I believe, but the major overhaul was conducted even before that.

I think my expectation is for the panel to look at what changes are necessary to meet the needs of today’s workplaces, the needs of employers today — different workforces that the employer and workers are engaged in and different types of businesses.

[6:05 p.m.]

I think that’s what they will be looking at — what the most efficient way is of dealing with labour-management issues as far as negotiations are concerned, how workers can join unions, that there is a fair process and that the employer and worker have confidence in the labour board that their issues are dealt with fairly and effectively. I think that’s the end goal of mine, and I will wait for the panel to come back with a recommendation.

It’s a highly regarded panel, as you know. These are the people that have been practitioners of labour law in the province for a long, long time, well respected, so I’m sure that they will do the right thing. I really look forward to their recommendations.

J. Martin: When we did our first set of estimates back in February, there was a particular issue in the news cycle that we spent a fair bit of time on, and I’d like to revisit that at this point. Specifically, to the minister, we canvassed the potential of removing workers’ rights to a secret ballot during those estimates. The minister stated that workers have a right to join a union of their choice without interference or intimidation or coercion by anybody.

From that statement, is the minister — as he has mentioned before, as has the Premier — still intent on pursuing the elimination of the secret ballot?

Hon. H. Bains: I did not specify any specifics about what changes I would like to see in the labour code. That’s why the panel was established. It’s their job. Their job is to consult with stakeholders — especially the union and employer side, and academics and labour law practitioners — and come back with a recommendation.

What I believe and what I said at that time…. Certainly, I believe those are every worker’s constitutional rights — what I mentioned. They have a constitutional right to join a union or association of their choice without interference by anybody. That is the law. So the panel will look at that and how you accommodate those workers’ rights. That is fair that there’s no interference by anybody.

What I’ve seen in the past…. You must have heard, and other members in their offices as well, that there are complaints about intimidation, threats, coercion and discouraging workers from joining the union of their choice. That should not be allowed. That’s the work of this panel to find out how we deal with that. I’m hoping that they’ll come back with a recommendation to deal with that issue and a whole host of other issues under the labour code today, to modernize labour laws in this province and make sure that we are meeting the needs of a changing world of workplaces.

J. Martin: Does the minister have an equivalent degree of enthusiasm that there should be no harassment, bullying, threats or intimidation for workers who do not want to join a union or association?

Hon. H. Bains: I think my statement was very clear. By nobody, I said. I did not mention one side or the other. No one should be intimidating anyone, because it is their right. It’s a worker’s right to join a union of their choice without interference or intimidation by anybody.

I can tell you my own experience, Member. I organized members into my union. We gave them information, we met them, and we asked them to make their decision. They, of their own free will, said: “Yes, I want to sign on that membership card.”

[6:10 p.m.]

Those cards were then passed on to the labour board worker, they were confirmed, and once the confirmation was made, they made those decisions. But intimidation, coercion and interference by nobody. That’s their constitutional right, and that’s what I stated.

J. Martin: There was a well-circulated news report of construction workers in Alberta who, facing new labour legislation, were duped and tricked into signing union certification cards. One individual who was very awkward with the English language, a recent arrival, was told that he owed a significant sum of money in back dues and that these could be virtually forgiven if he signed a particular form. That form was the union certification.

So we’ve seen some trickery, and we’ve seen some levels of behaviour that clearly are unethical and unacceptable. Should B.C. go down a route where there is no secret ballot, what assurances can the minister give us that the workers who do not particularly favour joining a union or an association will not face intimidation or bullying or even just the ostracization of being identified as someone who’s not going with the crowd?

Hon. H. Bains: Remedies are available in today’s labour code. Any party can file an application with the board to deal with those allegations. A union can do that, and then there’s a hearing. The evidence is presented, and the decision is made by the chair.

Employers have the same thing. There are cases that you hear every day that they try to intimidate, coerce or bribe, in some cases, to keep the member from signing or voting.

There are remedies that are available. I’m sure the remedies will be recommended again. But that’s the role of this panel: how do we strengthen these areas? They may come back with recommendations, because we want to prevent that.

The panel, like I said, are long-term labour law practitioners. They know exactly what goes on during those hearings and during those applications. They know what the problems are. They know, hopefully, listening to everybody, and can find some solutions so that that type of behaviour and those types of complaints can be dealt with swiftly and fairly.

J. Martin: One of the bits of inertia that we have, particularly in the public service, is that rarely do we ever want to get to a complete overhaul and bring in something that has never been seen before. It’s more about tinkering with what’s there and trying to reform and, in some cases, modernize what’s there.

But every now and then we do see some thinking outside the box, and something comes into the public sector sphere that we never expected. I see something like that in the bullying and harassment handbook from WorkSafe B.C.

An important point mentioned is that bullying and harassment can come from non-workers such as clients. To me, that’s a very innovative, novel approach. It’s probably not something that would have been part of a conversation ten or 20 years ago. It kind of recognizes that there are certain dynamics in the workplace that we haven’t really thought of before.

Bullying and harassment can really only come from…. Originally it was only from your superiors that you were subordinate to. Now it’s from your co-workers. But we know it’s much broader than that.

One thing I’m interested in is, given some of the hostility and the ferocity and the digging-in of protesters at different workplaces — and I think we can all surmise which ones I’m referring to — is it possible that protesters outside a workplace or occupying a workplace could be considered capable of bullying and harassing workers under the legislation?

[6:15 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: The member knows that bullying and harassment at workplaces is prohibited. Under the WorkSafe rules, the employer is required to have a workplace free of harassment, bullying and discrimination.

Also violence prevention. There are a number of examples that I can give the member where outside influence and outsiders come in and there was a threat of violence. WorkSafe inspected those employers to make sure that they had a violence prevention program in place so that those workers are protected from any violence from anybody.

J. Martin: Given that we’re in an era where, at certain worksites, employees require police escort to get to and from the site and protesters are under court orders to remain a certain distance from the worksite and these are being routinely violated, does the minister see a sense of urgency to be very mindful of the need to ensure that workers are safe from where these protests might end up?

Again, this isn’t being facetious. We think back to the days of protesters spiking trees, which was a deliberate attempt to injure forestry workers, or worse. I think it’s very critical that we address this, because we’re in a particular era where protesters feel particularly empowered. They get some sense of that empowerment from a government that has not condemned the civil disobedience in any way whatsoever.

The Minister of Labour is in a unique position from the rest of his colleagues, in that the safety of those employees on the worksite falls under the jurisdiction of his ministry. I’m hoping that the minister…. Even though I understand and appreciate that the government isn’t going to come out with a blanket condemnation of those acting in civil disobedience, the minister has an obligation to lend his support to the safety and the well-being of the employees at those controversial worksites, and I’d ask for his comments in that regard.

[6:20 p.m.]

Hon. H. Bains: My expectation is and the WorkSafe mandate is that every worker deserves to be safe at the workplace, their health and safety protected. As I said earlier, WorkSafe requires all employers to provide that environment at the workplace — free of harassment, bullying, discrimination and intimidation — and also to do risk assessments and violence protection initiatives. They’re required to do that. I think employers working with WorkSafe…. I’m sure they can deal with those issues.

J. Martin: That concludes my questioning, and I believe that concludes the questioning from the opposition caucus as well. I want to thank the minister for being forthcoming. There was not a single point where I thought he was in the least bit evasive or deflecting, and the minister and his staff have always been accommodating when I need information.

Being in opposition isn’t nearly as much fun as government, but I certainly enjoy the estimates process. I think it’s a very valuable tool to hold the government accountable, and I look forward — unless I’m shuffled out or the minister is shuffled out — to doing this again at a future date. So thank you to the minister once again, and to his fine staff.

Hon. H. Bains: I want to thank the critic, and I want to thank all the members who asked questions during the estimates. Those were very good questions, and I’m hoping that they were helpful to do your job and take it back to your constituents. The conversation was very, very civil — I would say very respectful. I want to thank you and thank all the other members who engaged in estimates.

Vote 34: ministry operations, $12,638,000 — approved.

Hon. H. Bains: I move that the committee rise, report completion of the resolution and completion of the estimates of the Ministry of Labour and ask leave to sit again.

Motion approved.

The committee rose at 6:22 p.m.

The House resumed; Mr. Speaker in the chair.

Committee of Supply (Section B) having reported resolution, was granted leave to sit again.

Committee of Supply (Section A), having reported progress, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. M. Farnworth moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.

The House adjourned at 6:24 p.m.